


Girls Before Swine

by Chumpersonable



Category: Ranma 1/2
Genre: Gender Dysphoria, Multi, Trans Female Character, Trans Female Hibiki Ryouga, Trans Female Saotome Ranma, Trans Girl Ranma, Transgender, Transphobia, regular feelings that regular boys have, these girls have all got some VERY sturdy closets, trans Ranma, trans girl ryoga, trans ryoga
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27421924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chumpersonable/pseuds/Chumpersonable
Summary: Ryoga Hibiki had led a hard life with a lot of unexplored feelings. Luckily, he had someone to blame for at least half of it, but it seems Ranma has some issues of his own to work through...
Relationships: Hibiki Ryouga/Saotome Ranma, Hibiki Ryouga/Saotome Ranma/Tendou Akane, Hiroshi/Saotome Ranma
Comments: 128
Kudos: 155





	1. The Lost Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is mostly a streamlined retelling of the events of episodes 7 and 8 of the anime, with a great deal of fat cut and the slightest hints of gender and sexuality feelings thrown in. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> A *HUGE* thanks to my friends Maxie, Jasmine, and Kay for giving this a few once-overs before publishing. They caught a few things and overall improved the flow in a couple places, and were in general a wonderful help.
> 
> Edit: Learned that when I moved the text over to AO3 it didn't keep any of my italics! That should be fixed now.

The sun was high in the air of the Gobi desert, and the blistering heat rose in shimmering waves off the dunes. The resulting distortion of the air would have made it hard enough to see any landmarks even if the fierce winds weren't whipping sand around enough to lower visibility down to a few yards anyway. Not that it mattered to the boy trudging through the blighted landscape anyway, as he hadn't seen a sign of any other human beings in days. He was covered head to toe in a thick brown cloak worn over a ratty yellow shirt and black pants half held together by wrappings at the bottom, and his face was entirely obscured by a protective mask and goggles. All of this was perfectly suited to keeping sand out of sensitive areas and was therefore normal desert attire, with the exception of one thing: most people would not think to bring an umbrella into the middle of an arid wasteland. _Most_ people would also traverse the desert by night in such a sweltering outfit and use the hot days as a chance to rest in whatever shade they could make, but this young man was clearly too determined to reach his destination to even consider stopping.

Or perhaps he just hadn't thought to travel at night.

Stumbling into an oasis, he refilled his canteen and, with surprising care, dampened his yellow-and-black spotted bandana and wiped his face. He approached a much older man (who had just gotten done splashing a generous amount of water into his own face, which countless desert days had transformed into something resembling an old leather sofa) and after they each cycled through languages until they landed on a dialect of Chinese they could both bastardize well enough to get the point across, held up a map. It had stick figures. It had a smiling sun. It was, to put it generously, completely useless.

"Excuse me", said the boy. "Could you tell me how to get to Furinkan High School?"

_______________________

Several days and 2000 miles away, in the Nerima ward of Tokyo, the eldest of the Tendo daughters was of the opinion that the household was having an altogether too interesting night. Admittedly, Kasumi thought there hadn’t really been a boring night in the Tendo household since her father’s old friend had shown up with his son just a week prior. ...Kasumi stopped to think. It couldn’t possibly have been only 7 days, could it? It felt like so much longer than that. Doing a quick mental replay of the daily routines and noting when she no longer remembered a brash boy fighting with her sister Akane or her father finally having a shogi partner, she shrugged. She supposed that was just how life with the Saotomes was going to be. In any case, the reason for tonight’s excitement was being caused by middle child Nabiki advancing on the Saotome son Ranma with a dress in hand, brown bob of hair disheveled and sweaty from running through the house, and a look on her face that even Kasumi (always one to assume the best in people) could not manage to read as anything other than “nefarious”.

“All your clothes are in the wash, Ranma!”, She remarked gleefully. “Besides, it’s only for a few hours!” Ranma, for his part, was backing down the hallway, naked from the waist up, with only a towel draped over his breasts for modesty.

“N-no way!”, He said, heart pounding in his throat and eyes darting to look for any available exits (there were none). “I’m a guy, there’s no way yer makin’ me wear no girly clothes!” Meager protests were made, but the boy who was to be Akane’s husband meekly agreed to wear something out of the girls’ closets. So long as it wasn’t _too_ frilly, of course. A man had pride to maintain, after all.

It is at this point, perhaps, that an explanation is in order. One week ago, Soun Tendo had called his daughters for a family meeting and explained that his old friend and fellow practitioner of the Anything Goes school of martial arts would be bringing his son to become the fiancé of one of the three of them. None of them were exactly _thrilled_ with the news. Kasumi, as the only one who was out of high school, had a vague feeling of discomfort at the idea of dating someone her sisters’ age. Nabiki seemed to primarily be interested in how cute the potential suitor was, and as for Akane…well. The less said about her (very reasonable, considering circumstances) hangups surrounding boys, the better.

The duo who had appeared at the dojo that day, however, were not the martial arts master and his son (cute or otherwise) as promised, but a 250 pound panda carrying a protesting young woman on its shoulder. There was some momentary confusion and a misunderstanding relating to the family bath that’s best left buried, but it was soon explained that on their training mission in China, both Genma and Ranma had fallen into cursed springs known as Jusenkyo. The father, who fell into the Spring of Drowned Panda, became a large, fat panda, reduced to writing on signs to communicate. The son, who fell into the Spring of Drowned Girl became, well. A daughter. Fiery red hair, a figure to make any girl jealous, and funnily enough, perfectly applied purple eyeliner. Kasumi often wondered how the curse accounted for exactly what makeup the unfortunate victim was wearing at the time of their death, but doubted anyone else even noticed.

And so it was that the two elder sisters of the dojo found themselves rummaging through the youngest’s closet for something for Ranma to wear, as she was the closest in size to Ranma’s girl form. She wasn’t happy about the situation, and made sure to let everyone in earshot know.

“So why does Ranma need to borrow my clothes, specifically?” Akane asked, frowning while sitting on her bed and decidedly not helping pick something out. “If you’re both so determined to dress the weirdo up like a little doll you can use some of your own clothes!”

Kasumi smiled, “But Akane, you and girl Ranma are nearly the same height,” she reasoned. “It just makes sense, we wouldn’t need to alter anything! Plus, you have so many clothes that would look so cute on him like this!”

 _Weirdo. Girl Ranma._ Ranma was not liking the tone of the conversation, and decided to put his foot down. “Well I ain’t wearin’ no skirt, no way! At least find me an outfit with pants!”, He angrily demanded.

And so it was that he found himself dressed in a pastel pink pair of overalls emblazoned with the English word for “China” on the bib, worn over a plain orange cap-sleeved t-shirt. Ranma found himself staring at the outfit in spite of himself, he was used to the loose silk shirt that he normally wore and didn’t notice much of a difference in the fit between his 2 forms. It was an odd sensation to wear something that actually seemed to be fitted properly.

“Huh! It’s a perfect fit!” Akane’s words brought Ranma back to reality, and he immediately angrily retorted by describing exactly how the tomboy failed to measure up to the body of his girl form.

“Are you kidding me? The chest is practic’ly suffocating me, it's so tight!” He whined, being as obnoxious as possible. “And I’m _swimming_ in this baggy waist!”, He said, tugging on the pockets for emphasis. Akane, taking the bait, immediately began whaling on the boy with a bokken, screaming that she was going to kill him. Ranma wasn’t sure why he continually antagonized his arranged bride. It’s not like she was unpleasant to be around. She was a skilled martial artist, and despite his many jibes to the contrary, was genuinely very cute with her long, flowing black hair and he found himself getting butterflies in his stomach whenever he caught a glimpse of her all-too-rare smile. There was just something about the whole situation, he decided. It wasn’t his fault, their dads had forced them into this arranged marriage without consulting them, that had to have put a damper on things. And then there was the way that every boy at Furinkan High, led by Tatewaki Kuno, the Blue Blunder himself, endlessly threw themselves at her every morning, declaring their love in the same breath that they used to swing a hockey stick at Akane’s head. It was no wonder she hated men. Add that onto Ranma’s lack of any female socialization since he started going to an all-boys’ middle school, followed almost immediately by a nomadic life of training in the Anything Goes style, dating her like a normal person was just out of the question! And Ranma wouldn’t say it (certainly not to Akane’s face), but there was something he somehow knew he’d have to pony up some hard-earned yen to the all-knowing Nabiki for.

He had a sneaking suspicion that Akane’s hatred for boys went a bit beyond the simple result of experiencing firsthand the boorish bullheadedness of your average high school boys.

And thinking about this for too long made him very sad for some reason.

_______________________

Days passed, with Nabiki forcing a girl-bodied Ranma into a number of increasingly skimpy and ridiculous outfits that he wanted no part of. It was as if the girl was getting some sort of sick thrill out of it, Ranma thought. Unbeknownst to anyone at the Tendo household, miles away a boy was zigzagging across Japan, with his utter inability to follow directions kindly given to him matched only by his grim determination to make it to Tokyo and face his hated rival Ranma Saotome once and for all. Tired, hungry, and desperately needing a shower (a _hot_ one, the boy ruefully thought) he staggered through what finally seemed to be urban streets and grabbed the collar of the first person he laid eyes on.

“Alright you! Tell me where to find Furinkan High School!”, he barked, expecting a nervously stammered set of directions that would turn into a jumbled mess in his brain. Instead, the boy he had grabbed simply looked at him with an unamused expression and pointed behind the strong boy trying to threaten him, not bothering to say a word. Sounding out the kanji etched onto the sign like someone unfamiliar with the written word, the boy started shaking and turned back to his new informant. “Now tell me where I can find Ranma Saotome!” Before the question could be answered, however, the boy in yellow heard shouts from the school.

“Wait, Ranma! Come back here, you jerk! Come back!”, shouted a girl with long black hair that the wandering boy didn’t know. Who he _did_ know, however, was the pigtailed boy with the black hair she was chasing. It was _him_.

“RANMA, PREPARE TO DIE!”, he shouted, lunging at Ranma with his umbrella and leaving a crater in the ground from the force of the impact. Ranma had dodged with a handflip, however, a move which enraged the bandana-wearing youth. “Still just as skilled at running away, eh Saotome? I’ve waited for this moment for so long.”

Ranma stroked his chin thoughtfully, not saying a word. “Do you know this guy?”, Akane asked. Something about the genuine look of confusion seemed to strike a nerve with his attacker.

The scruffy-looking youth looked crushed. “...You mean you really don’t remember?”, he asked, seemingly on the verge of tears. Ranma shook his head rapidly to indicate that no, he did not. Anger replacing grief, the mystery boy asked “Well then answer me one thing, Saotome! Why didn’t you come to our fight at the agreed-upon time?”

Realization dawned. “Oh I remember now!”, Ranma said with a snap of his fingers. “We went to junior high together! Lessee, yer name was uuhhh…”

“It’s Ryoga Hibiki”, Ryoga said, glaring at the other boy.

“Oh yeah, long time no see man!” Ranma said with a smile, moving to lay his hand on the shoulder of his old buddy. Ryoga smacked it away, clearly not amused.

“Just tell me why you didn’t come to the fight, you coward!”, he snarled.

Ranma pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well _Ryoga_ ”, he said, words dripping with annoyance, “ _some_ people’d consider failin’ to show up after 3 days for a fight _that was behind yer house_ to be the real mark of a coward. I thought you always went on about bein’ a ‘real man’. What happened to that, huh?”

Ryoga’s eye twitched. “O-oh yeah?” he screamed, tears welling up in his eyes. “Well a _real man_ wouldn’t _abandon his best buddy_ to go on some _TRAINING MISSION IN CHINA!_ ” Shit. Tears were flowing. Tears were unmanly. Boys didn’t cry, much less strong martial artists. He had to get this fight started. “You went and broke a man-to-man promise, and you DARE to run away and claim the high ground? This is revenge, Ranma! I went through hell tracking you down, and I’m about to pay it back to you tenfold! Say goodbye to your happiness!” Enraged, Ryoga threw his umbrella in a sweeping arc at his former friend, the bystanders crowded around intuitively knowing to back away rather than see just what was up with this weird weapon he carried.

Moving the minimum distance needed to avoid the passing umbrella, Ranma turned to Akane. “Happiness?”, he asked. “Akane, do I look happy?”

The joke failed to land, with Akane simply saying “what are you asking me for?” Ranma paused in a rare moment of introspection. Why _had_ he asked Akane if he was happy? ...Whatever. It was just a dumb joke delivered to a humorless girl. Introspection cancelled. “You need to figure out what this guy’s beef with you is! It seems like more than a normal grudge.”

Ranma punched his open palm in realization. “Hey Ryoga, buddy! Is this about the bread I sniped during school lunch?”, he asked, confident that he had gotten to the bottom of the misunderstanding.

Clearly furious, Ryoga shouted “No it is not about the GOD DAMN BREAD, RANMA!” and jabbed at him with the umbrella. The fight was on. Chasing the red-shirted coward to the high school’s soccer field, Ryoga skidded to a halt, breathing deeply with umbrella in hand. Ranma finally stopped running and faced him. “Why’d you stop running, Saotome? Finally decided to man up and face me?”

“I was just getting us away from bystanders, ya big lug”, Ranma said, rolling his eyes. Looking at the crowd gathering around Nabiki to place bets, he realized it was a pointless effort. As the two began their match, Ryoga threw his umbrella at Ranma once again. The pigtailed boy easily sidestepped it, almost ashamed that his old friend had gotten so sloppy. He didn’t notice the handcuff until it was around his wrist. The throw was a feint, and the boys were now tethered together. Ryoga smirked. Ranma wouldn’t be running away _this_ time.

“Just try to run away now, Ranma!”, Ryoga goaded.

“How many times do I hafta tell ya, I didn’t run away!”, Ranma shouted, blocking Ryoga’s punch while throwing a kick that collided with the other boy’s own, resulting in a perfectly symmetrical display of violence. The umbrella, meanwhile, had come to rest at the edge of the field, and students were discovering that it weighed more than the average adult. Akane was mortified that a person who could toss this like a frisbee was allowed outside of a research lab, let alone fighting someone she was technically engaged to, even if she didn’t actually want to admit she _cared_ about him at all.

“Ranma, don’t let him hit you! Be careful!”, she shouted. She needn’t have bothered. Ranma was finally beginning to have some fun.

The handcuffs had been a smart ploy, if not for one detail. They didn’t call Ranma’s style “Anything Goes” for _nothing_. Swinging below his opponent using the tether, Ranma pinned Ryoga under his weight. Which also would have been a smart ploy, if Ryoga Hibiki hadn’t happened to have been the strongest fighter in terms of brute strength that Ranma had ever faced. Using his one free hand, the boy in yellow launched them into the air and clear out of the school grounds, where he half chased, half was dragged by his opponent to the Nerima Zoo.

_______________________

“Why won’t you fight me head on, Ranma?” Ryoga yelled, swinging his umbrella and inadvertently snapping the tether attaching them, as well as cutting a slit into the chest of Ranma’s shirt.

“Hey, you ruined my favorite shirt!”, Ranma said, looking down in shock. “It’s going to take hours to fi- to work off what it’ll cost to replace!”

Ryoga scoffed. “This is a duel to the death, Ranma! Don’t you start talking like a _girl!_ ” Ranma blinked, taken aback, before scowling.

Well, thought Ranma, it had been fun, but it was time to end this. “Who you calling a girl? I’m a guy!” Ranma aimed a kick at his opponent, who jumped to escape, leaving Ranma to collide with a drinking fountain. Uh oh. Water erupted into the air, a freezing cold geyser. Ryoga immediately blocked the water with a quick, practiced deployment of his umbrella. Ranma was not so fortunate. Still focused on beating his opponent, Ranma turned to the other boy and in a voice an octave or so higher demanded “Come on, let’s finish the fight Ryoga!”

“Wh- who the heck are you?” Ryoga gaped, staring at this new girl. Where his old friend and rival Ranma Saotome had just been there was now a much shorter, cuter figure standing in an identical fighting stance. Red hair had replaced black, and instead of a flat, muscled chest she had. She had…

Oh, dear.

“Shut up and fight me!”, the girl shouted, landing a kick on the dazed martial artist. Ryoga recognized the kick. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t believe it.

“...Ranma…? Is it you?”, he asked, scarcely believing the evidence of his own eyes. But there was no room to dispute it. Ranma had been there one second, been splashed with water, and then standing in his place and acting just like him was this girl in front of him. Ryoga knew all too well what this meant. That bastard Saotome had fallen into his own spring at Jusenkyo.

“Ranma, your blouse!” Akane yelled, running up to the two sparring boys. Ranma blanched for half a second and was about to insist that he was wearing a regular silk shirt and not some girly blouse, but remembered the huge gash in the chest just in time to realize that he now had a huge chest of his own. As he quickly covered up his assets, Akane asked “Didn’t you even notice that you became a girl?”

“Ranma… you’re…” Ryoga said, eyes wide and mouth agape. He was still having trouble processing what he was seeing.

“Yeah, yeah.”, Ranma muttered. “Laugh it up, Ryoga. That’s right, I’ve been cursed with this body thanks to pop’s idiotic training. Now I gotta live like this for the rest of my life, like some sorta half-girl _weirdo!_ ”

“Ha ha hahaha…”, Ryoga chuckled darkly, no humor in his eyes. "Don’t make me laugh! How can you say a thing like that?! Since when is having a beautiful body like yours a curse?"

Ryoga immediately knew he had said something wrong. You don't get an awkward silence like that unless everyone is judging you, and with those stares? They were judging him _hard_. At least, that was how his brain decided to interpret the largely slack jawed expressions of the group of bystanders who just saw a fountain explode (or were trying to sneak a peek at the chest of that redhead girl who just showed up). The recently-transformed focus of his attention, however, had a mix of emotions on his face that Ryoga couldn’t quite pin down. There was realization there, and was that… guilt? Did he _know_ he was responsible for Ryoga’s tumble into the spring of the drowned pig?

 _That jerk_ , Ryoga thought. This most recent embarrassment, like every misfortune you had ever suffered, was all his fault! Ever since Ryoga had met him in junior high his life had been a never-ending string of disasters, from the lousy rat cutting in the bread line at lunch, to skipping out on your fight like the coward he is, to leading you on a goose chase across China that gets you cursed! You used to _LIKE_ cold showers! And now when you finally find him, after years of running around Asia, you learn that he fell into a cursed spring too! But instead of becoming one foot tall with a curly tail he gets to be…

Gets to be…

...Human! Right. Human.


	2. Different Cuts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We finally begin our merciful break from canon as we slightly alter the events of episodes 8 and 9, this time with feeling(s)!

Rallying quickly, Ryoga began to yank several trick bandannas from the larger bundle keeping his long, shaggy bangs out of his eyes. He spun them like nunchucks until the centripetal force locked the bladed segments in place, turning the strips of spotted fabric from fashion accessories into deadly weapons. “Ranma Saotome, you make me _sick!_ ”, he yelled, angrily trying to compensate for the undignified display from before. 

Letting loose the sartorial shuriken, the fight watchers who were finally arriving on the scene immediately began to scatter when the first one lodged itself into a tree. Ranma was busy chasing after Akane, trying in vain to tackle her to the ground to protect her from the flying blades. Out of the corner of his eye he swore he saw Nabiki look at him in his girl form with yen signs practically flashing in her eyes flagging down her cohorts and gesturing excitedly at the sheet where she’d taken down the bets of the crowd. Confused and annoyed, Ranma continued trying in vain to stop his fiancée.

“Akane, don’t bother tryin’ to find hot water! It’s not safe!”

“Don’t be silly, Ranma, I’ll be-” The sentence ended there, as when Akane turned her head to respond her foot made contact with a tree root, causing her to trip. As if to underscore Ranma’s point, two bandannas whizzed past where she would have been standing and sliced the back of her skirt before it had a chance to settle to the ground.

“Akane!”, Ranma yelled, rushing over to see if she was alright. _Dumb tomboy,_ he thought. _She don’t hafta put herself in danger for my sake._ This uncharacteristically sweet thought was cut short, however, by an enraged shout from the boy in yellow.

“I’ve got you now, Ranma!”, Ryoga yelled, tossing several more bandannas and his impossibly dense umbrella at the prone duo. Intending it to be a two-pronged attack with no way to avoid both, Ryoga was dismayed to see Ranma grab the umbrella to use as a shield, spiriting his idiot girlfriend away with him into the treetops above. “Hey!”, Ryoga said, realizing with a small amount of panic what was happening, “give me back my umbrella!” It was shouted in vain, though, as Ranma was bouncing from branch to branch already, and Ryoga knew that with his old rival moving this way it would be all he could do just to keep up.

Alighting on a tree a (relatively) safe distance away, Ranma took a second to simply breathe. A long, even exhale to find his center and calm his thoughts, followed by a deep, measured inhale to reinvigorate his body and fill his nostrils with the scent of Akane’s floral conditioner-

Um.

That is to say, he took a moment to take stock of the current situation, attention turning to how to get Akane to safety while he felt the press of her head against his neck and her hands clutching at the back of his shirt oh God Damn It.

It had been like this since the first day he had arrived at the Tendo’s, in his girl form after the rain. Akane had been so warm and friendly then, even as Nabiki had poked at his chest and berated their father for bringing home a girl for one of them to marry. He barely caught it at the time, but Nabiki’s sly look towards her younger sister when she said that had taken root to the point where thinking about what it meant currently occupied a sizable portion of Ranma’s thoughts at any given moment.

It’s just that those first few hours, when Akane was convinced that she had a new female friend, were so… _nice,_ for lack of a better word. Knowing Ranma had supposedly been training with “her” father in China, she brought him to the dojo for some friendly sparring. Despite their immediately apparent mismatch in skill leading to a short fight, the look on Akane’s face when she thought she had a sparring partner who wasn’t some boy fighting for the “right” to date her was almost beatific. 

Ranma had never met many girls over the course of his life, and those he had known never seemed to want to talk to him much, but he was struck by the _rightness_ of all this. Previous crushes in his young life always felt like a minefield, where the danger of making a wrong choice outweighed anything else. Genma Saotome was not one to hold any truck with fancy ideas like “gender equality” and _definitely_ didn’t teach his son to respect women, but Ranma supposed that was what it was down to. Making a wrong move, saying the wrong thing, that would set off the mines. Better to sit from the trenches and watch. But… training with Akane, having her lead him around her home by the hand and show him her room, smiling and laughing… It didn’t feel like that. It felt nice, like all his old insecurities about the fairer sex had finally left him. Which just made what happened when it was time to wash up before dinner even worse.

He grimaced at the memory. Taking a bath in the furo, he had returned to his regular male form when little-miss-doesn’t knock opened the door and, after a pause so pregnant it would be more appropriate to call it gravid, screamed. Screamed and ran through the house shouting about a pervert in the bath. Even as Soun calmed her down and had Genma explain the nature of their curses to the Tendo girls, she sat directly across from Ranma, glaring at him. It’s not often you see a look that mixes disgust, betrayal, and frothing white-hot rage so well, but that was the look Akane had given him for the entirety of the meeting. Even after seeing Genma toss him into the koi pond to come out the girl she had just spent an evening bonding with, the look barely changed. He was worse than just a boy. He was, and at this point in the recollection the words that were fresh in Ranma’s mind from the other night joined the ones in his jumbled subconscious, a pervert. He was a malicious deceiver, a weirdo girl-boy, a predator, a _freak_.

This all passed in an instant, as before Ranma had time to properly suppress these emotions Akane suddenly realized who she had let herself get close to and scooted away on the branch, blushing. She stared at Ranma, dazed, and the redhead returned the favor for what felt like minutes.

Being the first to regain his composure, Ranma deflated the moment in his trademark way. “Y’know I didn’t _need_ yer help, tomboy. ‘Sides, it’s not right for someone to interfere with a fight between two guys!”

“I don’t see any guys,” Akane snapped back. “Just _perverts!”_

_Pervert._ Ranma’s breath hitched, had she read his thoughts? Nah, that’s absurd. This was just related to all the things she had seen with her own two eyes and came to an informed conclusion about. Wait. Two perverts? Ranma glanced down to see that the panting form of his adversary had just caught up to them, and looked extra-pissed.

“You two _lovebirds_ bickered enough yet?”, he asked, undoing his belt and snapping it into a solid bar with a press of his thumb. With a single swipe he cut a diagonal line clean through the trunk of the tree. As they tumbled to the ground, Ranma had enough presence of mind to grab Akane as he attempted to block further onslaughts with the stolen umbrella. In response, Ryoga simply whipped at it with the belt and pulled it taut, slicing it clean in half.

“Let go of me, you, you-”, Akane struggled to find the right words to properly voice her contempt for the pervert who dared to hold her, looking like that. She rallied spectacularly. “You _BOY!”_

“Fine,” Ranma spat, glaring at her and whipping his hand away. “It’s not like I was holding you because I like you or nothin’!”

_*SLAP*_

The sound rang out, clear as church bells, and the world stood still. Akane stood and looked at her fiancé, tears pooling under her eyes. “If I’m such a bother to you, then just leave me alone!”, she half said, half sobbed. Ranma took a couple of hesitant steps in her direction, words utterly failing him.

“STOP IGNORING ME, RANMA!”, Ryoga screamed. “I’LL TEACH YOU AND YOUR GIRLFRIEND TO CALL ME A PERVERT!”

Ranma didn’t have time for this. He kicked Ryoga’s trick belt out of his hands and ran after the fiancée he had hurt. “You know,” he said, looking back. “Fer someone who keeps goin’ on about _my_ cowardice and lack of honor, you sure have a lot of hidden trick weapons!” Ryoga growled, fangs bared. _Heh,_ thought Ranma. _What’s the matter, no self-righteous comeback t’ that one?_ “Akane, wait up! I’m sorry, I really am!”

“I don’t care, Ranma!”, she yelled. “And even if I did, I don’t believe you! I want nothing to do with you!”

The bladed belt, however, was following Newton’s most famous law, and its parabolic arc was beginning to skew in a more Earthly direction. As Akane swung her head around to tell Ranma to fuck off, Newton’s _second_ most famous law did its work on her hair, keeping it moving gracefully around due to its mass (concentrated in the bow at the end) and velocity (imparted by the petulant mannerisms of a teenage girl)

_*SLICE*_

Whereas the slap had been a sharp sound, overpowering the background noise of Nerima, the razor belt slicing off most of Akane’s hair had the opposite effect. Birds seemed to stop chirping, sounds of cars seemed to muffle, even the buzz of insects in the air seemed to stop. It was as if reality itself was holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

Akane just stood there. Oh, she saw Ranma wave his hand in front of her face like an idiot, but she ignored him. Despite what bystanders around them were saying, she wasn’t _exactly_ in shock. She was certainly dealing with the fact that if she hadn’t turned around just now she’d only be half the girl she was before, but it was on the back burner, so to speak. There were more pressing matters, around 100,000 of them to be precise, and they were all currently sitting on the ground by her feet.

She had been growing her hair out for years. Since the beginning of middle school, certainly. Since her first “tomboy”. It was very literally a part of her, the accumulated time she had spent taking care of it meant that according to the 10,000 hours rule, she was a hairbrushing virtuoso. So like… She should be _upset_ that it was cut, right? It’s only natural for a pretty young girl like her to be emotionally invested in her long, flowing locks.

So why didn’t she care?

This was the internal battle that Akane was fighting while people around her asserted that what happened to her was the worst possible fate for a girl. Even Ranma, after a female student suddenly asserted that “she” should immediately know the shame of short hair, told Ryoga off for (rightly) assuming she cared more about her life than her femininity. It didn’t matter. People would assume, and she would make a big show of being upset, because it was expected. Because it was normal.

Because she was normal.

She had to be, it’s why she started growing out her hair in the first place. Because there was a reason she always made a big fuss about Ranma calling her a tomboy. It was so that he wouldn’t move on to other words, like everyone else did.

Wait, hold on, she was hearing something. Ranma and Ryoga were both offering to let her take her anger out on them. She was sure they _meant_ anger about the hair thing, but she had enough in regards to everything else in the world to spare.

She obliged them.

Right in their stupid faces.

As Akane stormed away and the two boys nursed the new painful lumps on their faces, the middle Tendo sister cleared her throat to get the attention of the assembled crowd. “Alright everyone,” she called out. “How many of you bet on Saotome ditching the match before it ended?”

_______________________

  
  


Akane had to stop by Dr. Tofu’s on her way home, her ankle had been bothering her after tripping on the root. He had been the only person so far who hadn’t reacted in shock to Akane’s new hair. “Oh, wow Akane!”, he’d remarked with his pleasant smile. “I haven’t seen your hair that short since you were just this big! Ahahaha!” To emphasize the last point he held his anatomical skeleton’s hand at about waist height. Well. That put just about the last nail in the coffin for any imagined chances Akane had with her one lasting male crush. One of the things that had pushed her into growing her hair out in the first place was seeing how obviously smitten Tofu was for the gentle, soft spoken, and above all feminine Kasumi. She sighed. She’d done her best to copy even one of the three aspects and failed miserably at it.

Now Akane was staring out the window of her bedroom, thinking about her eldest sister and on what had really pushed her into her pointless endeavor to be a normal girl. Walking her home from Dr. Tofu’s clinic after a fight, Kasumi turned to Akane and said in her soft, sweet voice:

“Sorry Akane, it’s just that sometimes I feel like I have a _boy_ for a sister! If you don’t start acting like more of a girl Dr. Tofu won’t like you anymore!”

Which was, in retrospect, a _really messed-up thing to tell your sister,_ Akane realized. It had stung so much worse than any of the objectively meaner things whispered in school hallways and playgrounds, coming from someone she had known and trusted her whole life. She remembered how much Kasumi’s eyes had lit up when Akane had asked her for advice on growing out hair, how for a solid 2 years her birthdays and Christmases included a brush or new shampoo from her sister, who would watch her open it, beaming. _Well,_ Akane thought. _May as well rip off this band-aid._

“Hey Kasumi, could you help me with something?” Kasumi was busy preparing dinner, but turned around at her youngest sister’s voice.

“Of course Akane, what do you need-” Kasumi stopped, mid-sentence, smile remaining on her lips but the rest of her facial features edging away, afraid of what sound would come out next. A shriek. A tossed frying pan. A panicked Ranma rushing in to catch the falling pan and sautéed vegetables. “What happened to your hair, Akane?!”, Kasumi asked, aghast.

“Oh, I just thought I’d try giving myself a haircut”, Akane said. “It’s been too long, frankly. Though, could I trouble you to help me even it out just a bit?”

Ranma looked quizzically at her. He had just been about to explain the situation with the fight between him and Ryoga, about how this was all his fault, about how he was really, _really_ sorry about your hair, Akane, and she seemed… fine with it? Girls were weird, and Akane especially so, he decided.

_______________________

  
  


After the fight there were still a couple of days left in the school week, and at Furinkan various students stared at Akane’s new haircut (with an unpleasant amount pointing and snickering while elbowing their friends, Ranma couldn’t help but notice). She seemed unfazed, or at the very least very used to this sort of thing. Ranma was, frankly, slightly more concerned with the crowd of students apparently unable to afford lunch standing in a corner, all glowering at him. He was very grateful to return to the Tendo household Saturday afternoon.

It was then that Nabiki called him into her room, where she and her two friends were counting up a frankly ludicrous amount of bills. “Hey there, Ran-chan~”, she said, beckoning him over. “We just got done divvying up the takings from your little fight the other day!”

Ranma grunted at the cutesy nickname, figuring it was the most efficient way to convey both disapproval and acknowledgement at the same time. Looking down again at the yen covering Nabiki’s bed, he did in fact see it in 4 distinct piles: 3 of them very large and one much, much smaller. “I take it that one’s mine?”, he said, pointing at the smallest pile.

“You got it.” She winked at him. That, coupled with the staring eyes of her friends at not quite his face, finally led him to look down and realize that he was, once again, wandering around the house in girl form (freak microburst, meteorologists baffled) wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and a towel over his boobs. Ranma suddenly felt _very_ self-conscious. 

“A-ack!”, he shouted, covering his chest. ”I- I’m sorry! I jus’ didn’t realize there’d be company!”

“It’s no problem”, the redhead sitting on the floor said. Ranma didn’t know anything about her or the brunette on the bed aside from the fact that they palled around with Nabiki. “We’re all girls here.” She smiled at him, and he felt his heart skip a beat. A nervous glance at Nabiki revealed that she was, in fact, giving him a smug grin that plainly said _“Buy my silence, Ranma.”_

“That’s right, Ryonami.”, she said, not breaking eye contact with Ranma. “But yeah. It’s laundry day today and poor little Ran-chan here doesn’t have anything to wear until it’s done.”

“What, _nothing?”_ , Ryonami asked, taken aback. “Surely you have to have an old sports bra laying around _somewhere,_ right?”

Ranma could feel his face growing beet-red, and he was convinced he was personally putting out enough heat via embarrassment to raise the temperature of the room a noticeable amount. Nabiki looked like 17 years worth of birthdays had come at once. “No, I don’t.”, He said, looking at a particularly interesting patch of the floor far away from the 3 sets of eyes looking at him. “Now can I have my cut of the bet money or not?”

“Sure thing,” Nabiki said, passing him a wad of bills. “Should be about 5,500 yen there. _Do_ try not to spend it all in one place, okay Ran-chan~?”

Ranma stared at the money. It was more than he had ever held before, and he wasn’t _totally_ comfortable accepting all this from Nabiki. Though at least he knew _why_ she was giving him this. Far more disconcerting were the times when she would hand him a 500 yen coin out of nowhere and tell him it was “a secret” whenever he asked why she was giving it to him.

“Dang, Nabiki.”, he said. “Lotta bets on the fight?”

“Yeah, but if Tatewaki-kun hadn’t bet on Ranma ditching we’d have taken in twice as much.”, the girl passing cash to her friends said with a shrug. “Ah well, _c'est la vie_.”

“Bless you.”, Ranma said, already heading to the kitchen to put on a kettle. He’d have to have a talk with Kuno when he got back to school on Monday. That guy had some nerve, assuming he’d chicken out! He’d have to make it clear there were extenuating circumstances!

…

...Ranma had no idea how to do that. It’s not like he could just say he got splashed with water and turned into a girl, the two of them fell into the school pool while fighting on day _one_ and he sure didn’t get it then. Ranma had even tried to explain it more clearly a couple of times afterward, but it’s like the guy had some kind of mental block about this one thing. Whatever. Ranma would make it _very clear_ to the upperclassman that he wasn’t a chicken, he was a man amongst men!

_______________________

  
  


Ryoga Hibiki was tired.

He was tired, and he was _angry_.

After Ranma had run away AGAIN after his girlfriend or whoever, Ryoga was once again forced to track that bastard down (after a run in with an old woman who, in Ryoga’s opinion, was way too upset about the whole “detour to a volcano” thing), but he was finally outside the Tendo residence. It was the dead of night, the sky full of heavy and rolling clouds that a more _observant_ person would note usually precludes a storm. Ryoga was many things, but observant he wasn’t, and he turned his attention to sneaking inside of the house. Through some miracle, his first blind guess was correct, and he silently opened the door of the guest room on the sleeping forms of Ranma and his father.

He thought of Ranma’s words back at the fight, about his trick weapons. Well, he was down an umbrella, and the only bandanna he had left was keeping his hair out of his eyes. He figured it would be a fair enough fight. He inhaled, preparing to wake up the sleeping form of his rival before he noticed something laying next to Ranma’s futon. His school bag.

_Ah,_ Ryoga thought. _Bingo._

As stealthily as he could, Ryoga crouched down and reached his hand in the bag, wrapped in one of the pieces of fabric he used to cover his legs in case of any concealed traps to prevent exactly this. When a minesweep turned up nothing, he removed the leg wrap and searched with his bare hand. What he found was… mostly boring, to be honest. Pencils. Note pads. Text books. Pretty standard school bag stuff, he thought. He had almost given up, in fact, when his fingertip brushed up against something metal along the inside of the bag. A zipper to an interior pocket.

_Perfect._

Hand trembling, he reached inside and hit paydirt. A number of oblong objects, made of light plastic and glass. _Smoke bombs,_ Ryoga thought.He pulled them out to confirm and almost dropped them to the ground in shock. He stared at the tubes in his hand, and then at Ranma, asleep on the floor below him. Then back at the tubes. His breathing began to quicken, and if he stuck around much longer the clacking of glass on plastic would wake up the sleeping boy. Quickly, he shoved the offending items back into the zippered pouch and left the house.

Outside, Ryoga was shaking. To think, to _THINK,_ that Ranma Saotome could mock him even when unconscious. He was walking without a destination in mind, which was for the best, all things considered. He just needed to move. He kept thinking about what sort of man would keep something like that on hand. _In fact,_ he thought, desperately trying to ignore the identical clacking of glass and plastic audible through layers of clothes in his pack as if he were the protagonist of an oddly cosmetics-focused Poe story, _I know EXACTLY what kind of man would do something like that._

_A freak._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geez, I legit had to stop a few times and take some deep breaths while writing parts of this!
> 
> Also, I consulted both 1987 yen-to-USD exchange rate and an inflation calculator to come out to that 5,500 yen number. Ranma got handed the equivalent of about 40 bucks in 1987 dollars (or just about 90 2020 dollars)
> 
> EDIT: I was a bit confused about my dates, the amount of yen Ranma's been given has been adjusted accordingly.


	3. Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryoga does some reminiscing. Ranma gets emotional. Genma is awful.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, a flash of light shot out somewhere within the recesses of the inky clouds flying low over Tokyo, shooting from thunderhead to thunderhead and back like a lightspeed game of ping pong. Several seconds later came the deep grumble of some minor deity, miffed at the downgrade in respect given to thunder gods ever since humans started putting those damned metal rods on top of everything. 

Scientists would tell you that everything said there was complete nonsense, but then again they’d say that about cursed springs too. Best to ignore them.

Ryoga Hibiki, normally hyper-aware of any signs of rain, was instead lost in frantic thought. It was clear that Ranma was cursed in the same manner he was, though Ryoga’s old rival had clearly fallen into a spring where a young woman had met her untimely end, letting him at least retain the ability to talk and fight. Ryoga reflected on this point rather bitterly, as aside from the more confusing feelings he experienced when he saw his old rival change into the busty redhead, he was extremely aware that his own curse left him unable to do more than squeal and bite at an assailant’s ankles. Ryoga wasn’t a complete idiot, he saw the girl jumping out of the spray of water immediately decked out in purple eyeliner. It was hard to say for certain, given his porcine cursed form, but he assumed the form you took when doused exactly matched the appearance of the being that drowned at the moment of death. The sudden materialization of makeup was just confirmation of that hunch.

What it _didn’t_ explain, however, was why Ranma had tubes of makeup in his school bag at all times.

It wasn’t _normal_ for boys to wear makeup, he was aware. Ryoga shuddered as particularly unpleasant memories from his time at the all-boys junior high flashed through his mind. All _too_ aware. He never was invited to any more sleepovers after that incident with the medicine cabinet. Come to think of it, Ranma was the only guy there who hadn’t jeered at him that night. He was pretty much the only kid in school who would still talk to him after the story spread.

That settled it, Ryoga would have to go back to the dojo once morning came and talk to his old friend. He’d pretty much been walking in a straight line, and even with _his_ sense of direction he should be able to cover the 5 minute walk within a few hours. As he began to turn around, though, he felt a sensation on his nose that triggered immediate panic from deep within.

_*Plip*_

Oh no. Oh god. Not _now._

As the pace of raindrops increased, Ryoga reached frantically for his umbrella from its place on top of his large hiking backpack. The umbrella that was currently sitting in two clean halves in some zoo garbage can, waiting to throw out the back of some unsuspecting sanitation worker not expecting an extra 300 lbs to lift. He hadn’t had time to get a new one.

Ah, _hell._

Resigning himself to what was about to occur, Ryoga slipped his arms out of the straps of his bag to avoid getting tangled. At the same time, the now all-too-familiar feeling began of sprouting ears, a shrinking cranium, and lifting up and flattening of his nostrils as his nose began to jut out from his face, dragging his jaw along with it until the whole thing could more accurately be called a snout. The rest of his body soon followed suit, and soon a small black piglet was wriggling out of a lake of ratty yellow shirt.

It always took a few seconds to remember whatever it was he was doing when the curse engaged, seeing as how thoughts designed for a human brain now had to deal with the wildly different neural pathways of the new form. Ryoga soon remembered, however, and was in all honesty glad for the change. Something about being in the pig body quieted the ever-present feelings of shame he was feeling particularly strongly at the moment, made them seem further away somehow.

Making use of the still prodigious (if significantly reduced) strength he retained in his cursed form, he wedged himself under his backpack and trudged back towards the Tendo’s.

_______________________

  
  


Ranma was having the weirdest dream.

As he tossed and turned on the floor of the guest room, his mind’s eye was presenting him with the shadowy figures of Nabiki and her two friends encircling him. Nabiki upended his school bag and drowned him in a sea of purple eyeliner and cheap black mascara.

“No”, his dream self pleaded. “No, that’s mine, it’s a secret!”

The shade of Ryonami put her hand on his shoulder, surprisingly solid despite appearing to be made of congealed smoke. _“It’s no problem,”_ she said, voice echoing as if from the bottom of a well. _“We’re all girls here.”_

In a way, he was almost thankful to be woken up by the shrill squealing of a piglet as it jumped on his chest. Served as a decent distraction, and with any luck this could go in the pile of similar past dreams in his brain labelled “quickly forgotten” instead of “dwelled on unhealthily”.

Blearily, Ranma watched as the little black pig (with a strangely _familiar_ bandanna wrapped around its neck, he thought) shimmied its way through the slightly ajar door to the hallway. Getting up, he roughly pushed on the door as he followed it. Had he been more alert, he would have recognized the slight change in feeling and the scraping sound as the door encountered the friction of a heavy bucket balanced on top, leaning on the wall above the door frame. A Ranma working at full mental capacity would have immediately jumped out of the way. Instead, he looked up. Stupidly.

_*SPLASH*_

_*CLANG*_

Shivering, Ranma stood soaked in his now woefully inadequate tank top and grabbing hold of boxers that were far too loose on his newly diminished frame. Well, he supposed that was one way to wake up. At the end of the hall, the pig that woke him glanced in his direction and Ranma _swore_ it was sticking its tongue out at him. _...Did the_ pig _put the bucket of water up there?,_ Ranma thought. _No, that’s stupid._ It then taunted him by shaking its rump ( _no, no, it wasn’t taunting him. Pigs are not smart enough to do that,_ he mentally corrected himself) and dashed into the kitchen.

What the hell, he had to put a kettle on to boil anyway. Ranma decided to follow the little bastard. Maybe breakfast could be bacon this morning.

Walking into the kitchen, Ranma found the piglet sitting expectantly by the stove, occasionally casting furtive glances at the kettle resting on its usual burner. Ranma looked from it, to the oddly familiar backpack lying sopping wet in the corner, back to the piglet with its _distressingly familiar_ yellow and black bandanna.

“Oh, my god.”, he muttered, clicking on the gas range and pinching the bridge of his nose.

_______________________

  
  


“So you fell into the spring of drowned pig, huh?”

The two boys were sitting in the dojo, figuring it was the place where they were least likely to be disturbed. Ryoga fortunately had plenty of changes of clothes in waterproof bags in his bag, though Ranma certainly had a distressing moment where his childhood friend sprang up in front of him in the Tendo’s kitchen clad only in his signature headband. The last time he was even in the same room as the _concept_ of a naked boy his age was P.E. class back at his junior high, though he had always changed in the bathroom stall. It was cramped as all hell but it at least beat changing in front of everyone.

“Yeah, yeah. Yuk it up.” Ryoga was looking through his bag, ensuring nothing important got wet. “For the past few months I assumed I was merely pushed in accidentally by a random girl chasing a panda, but ever since I saw you change the other day, well…” He gave Ranma a quick glare. “It felt good to give my despair and anger something to focus on.”

Ranma gulped and started scooting away, raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture, but the anger soon left the other boy as he seemed to deflate. “But that’s not why I’m here. Though, it almost was.”, he amends after a thought. “I wanted to continue our fight from before, on truly equal grounds. No trick belts, no bladed bandanas, nothing. Just a fight between men!” At this point, Ryoga looked off to the side, unable to meet his friend’s eye. “It’s just… I wanted to make sure you weren’t hiding anything, right?” 

Ranma, while taking care not to show any outward signs of fear, nevertheless felt his heart begin to race at this. He _didn’t._ He _couldn’t have…_

“S-so I, uh. Well the thing is, I kind of um. I kind of rifled through yourschoolbag _ohgodI’msosorry-”_

“You did _WHAT?!_ ” Ranma jumped to his feet, eyes wide with panic. There was only one way this could end, but he was currently hurtling through the “bargaining” stage and felt it only fair to let himself hold onto the vain hope that Ryoga missed the zippered pocket. Glancing at the building where the Tendos and his father currently slept, he took a deep breath and hissed in a frantic whisper _“And just what did you FIND in there, Ryoga?”_

Ryoga, who had been idly sifting through the contents of his backpack, opened up one of the bags containing a set of clothes that looked… unlike the standard yellow shirt and black pants he constantly wore. Ranma couldn’t get a good look, but what he saw looked more… pastel. Ryoga quickly reached in, closed his fist around some small objects, and quickly sealed the bag and stuffed it back in with the rest. When he uncurled his fingers, Ranma gasped. Sitting in his friend’s palm was a tube of lipstick, some glittery lavender eyeshadow, and a simple black eyeliner pencil.

“Same thing I have in my bag, Ranma.”

Ranma went very quiet, staring at the cosmetics in his friend’s hand. After an uncomfortable amount of time, he began to let out a laugh. “...ahaha...hahaha…” Not blinking, he let his eyes unfocus as his peals of panicked laughter got louder and more frantic. “hahaHAHAHA! HAHA _HAHAHAHAA_ …!” Ryoga, who had interacted with other human beings even less than Ranma had over the past few years, almost got angry at apparently being laughed at after coming clean with one of his most closely-guarded secrets to someone he thought would understand. The anger, however, was quickly replaced by concern as his friend’s laughter took on a haggard edge, with deep, shuddering breaths and tears welling up in Ranma’s eyes. Before long the pigtailed martial artist was crying freely, laughter replaced entirely by wracking sobs.

“H-hey, Ranma! B-buddy!”, Ryoga said, patting his friend on the shoulder. “C-calm down, you’re going to wake everyone!”

Indeed, there were lights turning on and shadows visible moving about the Tendo household, which was otherwise almost silhouetted in the weak early morning sun. Snippets of conversations floated down to the dojo containing sentence fragments such as “what was that noise?” and “...coming from the dojo…”

Looking down at his crying friend, Ryoga, with a tremble of panic edging into his forced chipperness, gave a fanged grin that would give a small prey animal a heart attack and said “Listen, I _promise_ you this isn’t the end of the world! You can trust me, I won’t tell anyone! It’s like that mutually-assured something or other that they keep going on about on the news, we both have _the same_ dirt on each other! We freaks have to stick together!”

With the crying stopping even more abruptly than it had started, Ryoga looked into the face of his childhood friend staring up at him. Objectively, it wasn’t a pretty sight. His eyes were red-rimmed and still wet with tears, the lines running down his face rapidly evaporating and leaving a salty residue behind. The less said about what was going on in the nose department, the better. But Ryoga wasn’t focusing on that. His attention was drawn to one great, glaring detail that overshadowed everything else. Ranma was wearing the largest, most genuine grin Ryoga had ever seen him with.

And it was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen.

_______________________

  
  


As the Tendos crept into the dojo (Soun and Akane unarmed, Kasumi holding a skillet and peeking out from behind it, and Nabiki bringing up the rear with her camera. Genma was, of course, still asleep.), Ranma had already wiped the worst of the evidence of what had just transpired off of his face and cheerfully introduced them to his good buddy Ryoga. The boy in question stood there, too frightened by the inquisitive glares pointed in his direction to say anything, as Ranma fabricated a quick story about how he had arrived, soaked and hungry in the dead of night asking for a place to stay.

Kasumi immediately dropped her improvised weapon and wrapped Ryoga up in a hug unlike any he had ever received before, promising to cook twice as much rice as usual to make sure he had a good breakfast. As he gently placed his shaky hand on her back to return the embrace he could swear he smelled lilac petals. Did they make lilac scented hair products? They had to, he figured. Who on earth would put perfume on before investigating a home invasion?

Seeing his eldest daughter hugging this strange boy and deciding to trust in his youngest’s fiancé, Soun dropped his fighting stance and smiled. “Nabiki, be a dear and grab the spare blanket and pillow.” Surprised, Nabiki nevertheless headed into the house to get the bedding. Turning to the boy still stunned by Kasumi’s embrace, he said “Son, you can stay in this dojo for now, at least until we can make some new bedroom arrangements. Who knows, if we can force that great layabout still asleep in the guestroom to get a job we might not even need to survive off of rice!” With a jovial guffaw that set his shoulder-length hair flapping, he left the dojo just as his middle daughter returned and unceremoniously dumped Ryoga’s new bed on the floor. Having clearly done more for other people before 6 AM than she usually did all day, she grunted at the 3 remaining teenagers and shuffled off to the kitchen, muttering something about “extra coffee”.

Only Akane remained with the two boys, and she still looked skeptical.

“Hello Ryoga.”, she said, eyes narrowing. “Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but you _were_ trying to kill Ranma last Thursday, right?” He nodded mechanically. “Only you seem so…”, she glanced at the two boys kneeling on the dojo floor together. “... _chummy_ at the moment.”

Ranma took over for his overwhelmed friend. Standing up quickly, he said “W-well yeah! Ryoga here was feelin’ real sorry fer the whole uh”, He licked his lips with the panic of an inexperienced liar. “The whole ‘tryin’ to kill me’ thing. So he, uh, came in to apologize, like!” All the water that should have been in his mouth was currently streaming down his forehead.

Akane just stared, dumbfounded and almost impressed, despite herself. “And you expect me to believe any of that crap?”

“It’d be real convenient, yeah.”, her fiancé said, refusing to look directly at her.

For a second she seethed, and it almost seemed like she’d hit him like usual. Instead Akane sighed and seemed to deflate, and looked at Ranma with sad eyes. “You know what? Sure. Whatever you say, Ranma.” She turned and walked back into the house to change into her training gi.

Ranma wished she had just hit him, if he was being honest.

_______________________

  
  


The rest of the morning progressed pretty normally, if early for a Sunday. Nabiki was very much out of it at the breakfast table, eyes screwed shut and nursing a cup of coffee. Soun beamed at Kasumi, remarking that greeting the weekend this early was so refreshing that he was considering making it a habit. Ranma expected Ryoga to make his morning fight over the choicest bits of breakfast with his father a three-way free for all, but was surprised when the other martial artist failed to engage in the culinary combat. In fact, he seemed remarkably polite as he asked Kasumi for more rice and blushed when she complimented his good manners.

“Really, our other guests could do _so much_ to learn from you, Ryoga!” She said with a smile (and only the slightest edge to her voice betrayed her less-than-stellar opinion of the Saotomes). Ranma, who was in the middle of jabbing one of his chopsticks onto the back of his father’s palm in order to stop him from grabbing the last piece of steak from Ranma’s bowl, barely noticed.

“Th-thank you very much, ma’am. You’re very kind.” Ryoga’s blush, already a deep red, bumped up a level in intensity as he stared into his bowl. “A-anyway, once I’m done I’d be happy to help you clean up. It’s only fair.”

“Oh why _thank you,_ Ryoga! You’re such a perfect gentleman!” Kasumi said as she gathered the plates from Nabiki and her father. Defying all known anatomical laws, Ryoga seemed to shrink even more into himself, looking like he’d enjoy nothing more than to somehow hide behind his own shoulders. This Ranma _did_ notice.

“Hey Akane, y’hear that?” He smirked at the girl who had been resolutely ignoring him the whole meal. “Looks like the doc’s got some competition!”

No response. Akane simply sat there, silently eating her remaining rice.

Undeterred, he continued. “Hey, did ya hear me, tomboy? You might have a chance with yer dumb doctor crush after all!”

Akane finished her meal, set down her chopsticks, and thanked her sister for breakfast. She then got up, quickly brushed some grains of rice that had stuck to her blouse, and as she was heading to the stairs she quickly shoved Ranma’s face into his bowl with an enraged grunt before stomping off to her room. Genma quickly began sifting through shards of shattered ceramic to snag the pickled onions that Ranma had failed to eat yet.

“Oh dear,” Kasumi said, raising one hand to her cheek. “Ranma, I’m afraid that with Ryoga staying here that was our last spare bowl!”

Propping himself up and wiping the mixture of blood and soy sauce from his face, Ranma sighed. “It’s okay, I’ll grab some. I had some stuff I wanted to do in town anyway.”

His father immediately began sputtering at this. “What’s this? My own son, using his time off not only to shirk his training but to _go shopping_ at the mall like some kind of _girl?”_ Genma cried, proceeding to cry dramatically into his sleeve. Ranma figured there had to be some kind of trick to this, as Genma always seemed to immediately recover when appeased. “ _Oh, I thought I had raised you right, but I can see now that you’re still not a real man!”_ the bald martial artist sobbed.

Soun, who had been sipping his tea and trying his best to ignore Genma’s histrionics, cleared his throat reproachfully. Side-eying the pathetic form of his weeping friend, he said “ _Really_ now, Genma. I hardly think the boy spending a day without thinking about training will ruin him. It’s unhealthy to push him so hard! Besides, if he’s going on an errand for us, why, that’s better training than _Happosai_ ever gave us.” Soun allowed himself a slight grin at the jolt of panic the mention of their old master elicited in Genma. Turning his attention to Ranma, he asked “Now, do you need any money for the bowls, son?”, already in the process of pulling out his wallet.

“Oh, uh, naw, I’ve got some money.” _Don’t ask from where,_ he desperately thought. “Should be enough to get some bowls. Thanks, though.”

“Don’t mention it, boy!” Soun said with a laugh, his moustache threatening to encroach on his eyes’ territory if he smiled much wider. As he waved to the young man leaving the kitchen, he sighed and turned to his friend, who at this point had stopped crying crocodile tears now that the audience for them had left. “Genma, you have to start looking at things with an eye to the future! That son of yours is _finally_ showing signs of wanting to take responsibility for this dojo!”

Genma simply grunted and nodded, clearly not convinced. That boy was acting in depressingly familiar ways ever since Jusenkyo, and Genma was _not_ going to let him. He had made a promise to that effect years ago that Ranma would be a man among men, and the consequences for failure…

He shuddered briefly at the thought.

_______________________

  
  


Once he had turned a few corners, Ranma slowed down and glanced back at the dojo. He wasn’t sure if what he had planned for today was a good idea, but it was something that his recent fights with Ryoga had made him think about more than he had before. Taking a couple quick looks around to make sure there were no potential witnesses, he pulled a water bottle out of his bag. Well, his father was sort of right about him “going soft”. Ever since that trip to China, a couple parts of him had a worrying tendency to get very soft indeed. And today he was going to do something about that.

Still staring at the plastic bottle in his hand, he unscrewed the cap and doused himself with the cool water within. He shuddered as the odd feeling of transforming hit him. Despite the changing hair color drawing comparisons to those gimmicky dolls you dipped in cold water, Ranma always felt that the process of becoming a girl felt less like it involved magical sparkle sound effects and more like how a particularly violent sneeze felt, minus the bit where any part of him actually moved. Changing back, if anything, was worse. Imagine that same full-body sneeze but in reverse. As much as he felt that he shouldn’t be doing this after what his father said, he knew that what he had planned would be mortifying enough as it was. He certainly couldn’t do it as a boy.

And with red hair drying in the sun as he walked, Ranma made his way to the shopping district.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dang, and to think this chapter was going to have 2 entirely different plot beats in it (one which is probably pretty obviously just about to happen, and one which at this point is probably going to be pushed to chapter 5)
> 
> Also any and all questions about HOW exactly Ryoga managed to get the bucket of water up there will be met with a different joke answer ;3


	4. Finding Support

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this spine-tingling, pulse-pounding chapter, roughly 3,000 words are dedicated to Ranma buying a bra! Thrilling!

Ranma was in _way_ over his head.

Already overstimulated from both the unfamiliar sights and sounds of the mall, the young martial artist was about to face his most fearsome adversary yet.

Pastels featured heavily.

After passing by the decidedly _girly_ clothing store several times, craning his neck as he passed as if trying to browse without actually entering the establishment, he determined that this was not the way forward. Besides, people were starting to stare.

Now that he was actually inside, he had no idea where to start. All around him were numbers and letters that didn’t mean anything to him. Trying to decipher the arcane sizing information by examining the different pieces of underwear on display was like trying to learn English by picking up _Finnegans Wake._

Dear god, was this how Ryoga felt _all the time?_

____________________

  
  


The two employees minding the store at the time had been watching the small redhead for several minutes now. It was a slow day at what wasn’t exactly an exciting job to begin with, so they were thankful for the distraction. “So, Fujiko.”, the taller blonde one said, turning to her coworker. “What do you make of her?” 

“Dunno.”, replied the shorter of the two, giving an irritated grimace as her popped bubblegum caught on her nose stud. “It’s like she’s never been clothes shopping before. Funny, though.”

“How long do you think it’ll take her to ask for help?”

“I give her another 15 minutes.”, Fujiko responded. “Any longer and I think I might wind up laughing at a customer again, and I got told off for that just last week. I’m kind of on thin ice as it is.”

“I still say the manager was being a total bitch about that. That lady must have given you her measurements from 25 years ago.”

The two began to snicker to themselves at the memory as the more immediate image of the girl staring almost walleyed at the two bras she was trying to compare momentarily faded from their fleeting attention spans.

____________________

  
  


15 minutes passed, and with her friend pounding her fist on the counter and barely holding back laughter, the blonde was by default the volunteer to go help the poor idiot in the bra section. As she approached the younger girl, she heard her mumbling something along the lines of _“...too frilly, that’s no good…”_

“Hello there! Do you need any help, miss?” 

Ranma jumped in surprise, and turned around to see a much taller woman with a striking bleached head of hair smiling behind him. He almost replied with the standard “Who’re you callin’ ‘miss’? I’m a guy!” before realizing how utterly insane that would sound at this particular moment. Instead he stammered out a response of “O-oh! Yeah- uh, yes, please! Thanks, um,” he glanced at the girl’s name tag. “Thank you, er, Suzue.” When the older girl continued looking at him with the plastered-on retail smile, he realized he should continue. “I-it’s just that I’m pretty sure I’ve been wearing the wrong size,” he said, trying to act appropriately embarrassed. Not the hardest of tasks, considering how embarrassed he in fact was. “I’ve pretty much been guessing for a while now…”

Suzue replaced her fake smile with a genuine one. This girl was still a kid after all, and she remembered how intimidating bra shopping had been when she was… well. Considerably younger than the redhead in front of her, actually. Must be a late bloomer, she figured. Or just had not managed to work out how to properly size herself through the rapid (and _generous,_ she noted with a hint of envy) changes puberty had brought about. “You know, I think I can help with that.” Turning back to the checkout counter, she theatrically cupped a hand to her mouth and called out to her friend. _“Oh, Fujiko-chaannn~!”_

Fujiko couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Come on, Suzue. You know your Yasuo Yamada impression is terrible.” Her annoyed face quickly shifted into a grin. Suzue would always insist that she loved it, and you know what? She was right. “Here you go, dummy.”, she said, tossing a tape measure from behind the register over to her friend.

Sticking out her tongue, Suzue caught the tape and handed it to the girl in front of her. “Alright, what you’re going to need to do is head into that changing room and strip down to your waist-” a blush appeared on the shy customer’s face. “...and then measure around your chest _here-”,_ she said while gesturing around her underbust (the blush grew redder). “...aaannd then _here.”,_ while making an identical motion across the fullest part of her chest. The girl in front of her now had a complexion that almost matched her hair, and beads of sweat were forming on her forehead. As objectively hilarious as this was, Suzue did her best to comfort the obviously scared kid in front of her.

“Listen, it’s okay if nobody taught you this. Lots of women go years buying the wrong size of bra, this is nothing to be ashamed of.” She put her hand on a shoulder that nearly jumped out of its socket when the girl in front of her flinched in surprise. “After you’re done we can help you find what you’re looking for.”

The redhead gave a quick nod and sped into the changing room. Grinning now that she was out of sight of any customers, Suzue turned to her friend and counted down on her fingers while mouthing out the words “Five...four...three...two…”

Right on one, a high pitched yelp of surprise came from the changing room, followed by the shudder of someone realizing for the first time that unless certain preparations are taken a measuring tape applied to the chest is a very cold experience.

The two friends finally burst out laughing, earning confused glances from the few customers browsing the racks.

____________________

  
  


Ranma stepped out of the changing room, still blushing as she approached the girls at the counter. “I uh, I got 30 an’ 38? Is that okay?” _You dummy,_ he chided himself. _Ain’t like it’s a test or nothin’._

Fujiko gave a low whistle. “Inches, huh? We’re in Japan you know, imperial bras cost more. Import duties and such.” Her deadly serious demeanor quickly broke as the distressed girl in front of her started jabbering about re-measuring in centimeters and she cracked a grin. “Relax, kid. I’m messing with you.” Consulting a chart she had taped to the side of the register (as well as a calculator for a quick unit conversion), Ranma could hear a soft “dang” escape her lips.

“Well then, looks like you’re a 75E. We should have plenty in that size if you’ll just follow me real quick.” Ranma did, and was soon led to a selection of bras that to his untrained eyes looked more or less identical to all of the ones around them. “So, is there anything in particular you were looking for?”, Fujiko asked.

“Er, just somethin’ functional, I guess.”, he said. “Don’t want any lace or nothin, I want it to be comfy.”

Fujiko nodded and selected a number of unadorned bras with wide, cushioned straps. They were all, as far as Ranma could tell, completely utilitarian articles of clothing, which provided comfort of a sort. Not like anyone would get mad at him for finally covering up when hot water was unavailable.

**_They’re going to get mad._ **

Ranma started. That was clearly a thought that had come from his own head, but it had a different texture to it. An urgency that normal thoughts didn’t, like it was less something he came up with and more something his brain was telling him. Ranma didn’t care for it, and made a show of comparing a black bra to a deep purple one to cover up the fact that he was desperately trying not to freak out in front of a women’s clothing store employee.

**_Akane’s right, you are a pervert._** Ranma considered if a dark or light color would be more inconspicuous. **_She doesn’t even know about this stuff._** There was something to be said for plain white. **_Well, that is unless your freak buddy Ryoga told her._** He could dye it if he wanted.

“This one, I think.”, he said, holding up the white bra while desperately ignoring intrusive thoughts about what Nabiki and Kasumi would have to say about their favorite dress-up doll suddenly gaining a fashion sense of his own.

“Alright!”, she replied, “Was there anything else you were looking for today?”

Flashing back to what Nabiki’s friend had said when they gave him his cut of the take, Ranma cocked his head to the side as he quickly came up with a cover story as to why he didn’t already have one of what he was about to ask for. “Uh, yeah actually. I just made track this year an’ I guess I need a sports bra? Are there different measurements for that, or?”

Fujiko laughed. “Nah, those are easy. You can probably just grab a small.”, she said, as she pointed out a shelf containing what looked to Ranma almost like cropped-off tank tops.

He thanked the girl and grabbed a black one, heading once again to the changing room.

____________________

  
  


Ranma stared at his reflection in the full-length mirror in front of him. It was one thing to lounge around the Tendo household topless, he usually at least wore a towel over his shoulders for something approaching modesty. Quite another to actively consider the form in front of him as something he had to acknowledge as indecent. _You can do this,_ he thought to himself. _This is FINE_ . _Just think of this as a new martial arts challenge. A “Stop Flashing All Of Nerima” martial arts challenge from your tits._

Right. Sports bra first. Holding it up, Ranma was surprised to see what looked like a simple tube of cotton with holes for the head, arms, and torso. It also looked _very_ small, though the fabric was clearly very stretchy. Soft, too. Slipping it on (with some minimal confusion as to which side was the front) he found himself surprisingly comfortable. It was snug and made breathing very slightly more difficult, and would probably get very annoying after a while, but Ranma could see himself wearing it to avoid potentially embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions going forward. Though his male form was considerably larger, the ample stretch (coupled with the fact that it was meant to go over more than just toned pectoral muscles) meant that it would likely still fit, laying flat on his torso under his shirt.

Well, one down, he supposed. Now. The white bra. The sports bra had practical utility, it made _sense._ And though he had spent a long time picking out the least gay bra possible, Ranma had to concede that there was no way this was going unnoticed under his shirt at school. The only way this was getting worn is if he decided to leave the house in girl form.

Which… kind of already happened, sometimes? Like whenever he wanted to get heavily discounted food from smitten vendors (which was always, why pay full price if free is an option). And as much as the free show he gave them sweetened the deal on occasion, Ranma was beginning to doubt it was worth the glares and audible “tut-tuts” from disapproving older women. Or the soreness from unchecked bouncing.

Right, he’d at least try it on. It was bound to suck anyway, those cups had to dig into your chest, and the straps holding the whole contraption up looked like a recipe for chafing. Wearing this monstrosity would be like being hogtied by the world’s weakest cowboy for hours on end. Ranma figured he’d find something specific he didn’t like to give him an out for when he put it in the return bin by checkout. He’d just get a second sports bra to make sure he always had a clean one. And so, holding it as if it might explode if handled roughly, he stuck his arms under the shoulder straps, grabbed the ends of the band and reached behind his chest and ow, ow, ow, why are the straps digging into his neck like that, what could he possibly be doing wrong-

Ranma took his arms out of the shoulder straps, once again grabbed the ends of the band, and reached behind his chest and attached the bottom hook with some difficulty. Moving on he got the middle hook secured, and moved his fingers up blindly to do the last one, where he found that there was no eye for the top hook to latch onto. He traced a line down, feeling a hook and eye, a second hook and eye, and then an eye devoid of any hook.

God _damn_ it.

Ranma Saotome, disciple of the Anything Goes school of martial arts, hardened warrior and living weapon, a man amongst men, latched his bra in front and then spent 2 minutes awkwardly shimmying it 180 degrees around his torso.

Alright, well. That nightmare was over at least. Ranma was not feeling particularly well-disposed to this particular piece of underwear, and wished desperately to take the cursed thing off and never think about any of this again. But his pride was officially on the line, and that meant war. _Ready to meet me in the trenches, you son of a bitch scrap of cloth?,_ he thought as he angrily shoved his arms though the shoulder straps. As he grabbed the band to adjust everything to how it should be, he consoled himself. _Once I get this over and done with I’ll at least get to leave here and never look back-_

Then suddenly, something clicked. Once the cups and straps were in their proper places, the intense discomfort he had assumed was inherent to the clothing just… disappeared. More than that, he realized as he experimentally tugged at the elastic of the shoulder straps and band. It was _genuinely comfortable._ Ranma, who ever since he had taken a dip in Nyannīchuan assumed that being in his girl form came with the inescapable discomfort of bouncing breasts tugging at his upper chest and a sore back, had for the first time felt a _very literal_ weight lifted.

After some time reveling in the newfound comfort he was experiencing, Ranma realized that he should probably leave and make his purchase. Before he took the bra off, he happened to glance in the mirror once again. What he saw gave him a grin only slightly tinged by visions of free takoyaki dancing in his head.

_Oh my god,_ he thought, staring at the redhead with the spacey grin in the mirror. _If those guys running the food carts thought my boobs were big BEFORE…_

____________________

  
  


Leaving the changing room (and offering nervous apologies to the rather sizable line forming) Ranma took his purchases up to the counter, beaming.

“Everything fit okay?”, Suzue asked.

“It fit great! I really can’t thank you enough!” Ranma set the bras on the counter as he fished in his pocket for his wallet. “Figured that discomfort was half the point, just based on what I’ve heard.”

“Yeah, that’s what happens when everyone’s buying bras that are too small.”, the blonde behind the counter said. “Anyway, your total is 2,500 yen. You want it bagged, or are you cool with walking around with arms full of underwear?”, she said with a smirk.

Before Ranma could give his flustered response, Fujiko piped up.

“Yo, Suzue, you forgot about the offer again.”

“Ah, right.” She rolled her eyes. Nobody ever wanted the stupid offer. “Uh, so we have this computerized embroidery machine? For 500 yen we can monogram your clothes for you.”

Ranma thought for a second. He could probably explain why he had these for Kasumi without much of a problem, and she did all the laundry anyway. Getting his name on them was probably a good idea, honestly.

“Uh, yeah. Okay.”

The tall girl was clearly surprised by this. “Shit, seriously?” Realizing what she just said she clapped a hand to her mouth and looked around before composing herself as best she could. “Well could I ask what name you’d like on it, miss?”

_Alright Ranma,_ he thought. _You can do this. Just tell her your name and she won’t bat an eye, plenty of girls have masculine names. It’s FINE._

“My name’s, er, Ranko.”

_FUCK._

____________________

  
  


Ranma sat at a table by the food stalls, staring at the bag in front of him as if it was going to explode. It was the one from the discount store where he had gotten a couple of decent enough bowls, shoved under the newspaper packing in order to disguise his personal items from prying eyes when he returned home. The matter of actually cleaning these things when he needed to was weighing rather heavily on his mind. He had checked for washing instructions, and found a series of hieroglyphs on the tag that told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to use triangles, circles inside of squares, circles _not_ inside of squares, or curling irons during the course of the wash. Wonderful.

While idly wondering if he could bring himself to throw away a 3,000 yen investment, Ranma saw a couple of familiar faces buying some yakisoba at a nearby stall: his friends Hiroshi and Daisuke. Daisuke was ordering, and Hiroshi was idly people-watching until his eyes landed on the redhead and he paused in recognition. Ranma began to wave to them, but Hiroshi just looked confused and elbowed the darker-haired boy next to him while pointing at Ranma. He stared in Ranma’s direction for a couple seconds before abruptly shifting into an angry glare while he said something to his friend.

_Oh, right._ Ranma realized. _Neither of them actually know this form. I’m just some crazy girl waving at them._ Face reddening, he grabbed his bag and quickly made his way out of their line of sight. It was time he headed home anyway.

____________________

  
  


“Hey, Daisuke. Do you know that girl? She seems familiar for some reason.”

Daisuke, who was _very_ annoyed that his best friend had just elbowed him so hard that he almost dropped lunch, followed Hiroshi’s finger across the sea of tables. Some red-haired girl was waving like she knew the two of them, and Hiroshi was right. She _was_ familiar. Daisuke thought for a few seconds before remembering the outcome of a fight between his other friend Ranma and that crazy umbrella boy a few days prior.

“Oh my god, dude, it’s _her._ That girl who showed up to ruin the fight and lost me a month’s worth of allowance.”

Hiroshi, who had not bothered to bet, simply shrugged at his friend’s misfortune. “Well in any case, looks like she’s leaving now. Guess she realized we weren’t who she thought we were.” He ran a hand through his already messy brown hair and blushed a little. “She’s kinda cute, don’t you think?”

“Daisuke rounded on him. “ _Cute?_ I had enough saved for a new Famicom game, but then she had to go and ruin it! I’ll bet you anything she’s in league with Nabiki.”

Diplomatically choosing to ignore the flawed logic of placing a bet and blaming someone _else_ for losing your money, Hiroshi just shrugged. “Well, she was at that table alone. Let’s have lunch there before someone else takes it.”

Still grumbling, Daisuke followed him to the now vacant table. There wasn’t a lot of conversation during the meal, with Daisuke wondering if he could successfully go to the cops without revealing that he had participated in underaged gambling, while Hiroshi wondered if anyone at Furinkan knew more about the mysterious red-haired girl.

____________________

  
  


Ranma passed through the gate to the Tendo residence at around 2 PM. If he knew the schedules of the residents well enough by this point, he figured that his pops and Soun should be deep in their afternoon game of shogi, so they wouldn’t be a problem. Nabiki would be in her room doing who knows what, and Akane had mentioned going to something at the second-run cinema with her friends. That left Kasumi and Ryoga, both of whom were in the kitchen cleaning up from lunch.

“Oh Ranma, welcome home!”, Kasumi said when he announced his presence. “Did you get the bowls?”

“‘Course I did!”, Ranma replied, a bit indignantly. “That was practic’ly half the reason I went out.”

“I’m sorry, you’re right. It’s just that you were out for so long I thought you might have gotten sidetracked.” The eldest Tendo sister gave the ceramics a quick once over. “Well, it’s a good thing these weren’t damaged when you encountered whatever splashed you.”

“Hm?” Ranma blinked quizzically before remembering what form he was in. “Oh, uh, yeah. That. Actually, I got splashed on my way out. It was that old lady on the corner again.”

Kasumi smiled and nodded, used to this happening. Apparently satisfied, she started washing the bowls so that they could be used for dinner. “Ryoga, you’ve helped more than enough for today. Please, go and enjoy your Sunday!”, she said, smiling down at her first helper in years.

“O-oh, thank you Miss Kasumi!”, Ryoga said, practically standing at attention. “I just feel like I need to thank you for your hospitality, it’s not fair for you to do so much work by yourself.”, he said, staring somewhere in the vicinity of Kasumi’s knees.

With his thanks said and Kasumi smiling sweetly at him, the muscular boy about-faced and nearly managed to walk down the wrong hallway en route to the guest room. On the way out of the kitchen, he gave Ranma’s cursed form a similar look to the one he had given when he first saw the other boy transform during their fight. Stripped of its previous anger and shock, however, Ranma found it… strangely probing. He shivered, not sure if he cared for it.

Making his way upstairs, Ranma entered his room and set the bag down. He had a secret now, and hell if he knew how he was going to keep it. He couldn’t keep two bras in his school bag like he did his makeup, he supposed he’d have to find some corner of the closet to shove them in.

The closet that he shared with his pops.

Oh, _shit._

Genma would find out. There was no _possible way_ he wouldn’t find out. Ranma suddenly knew exactly how he was going to keep this new shame a secret: he _absolutely wasn’t._ This wasn’t going to last a few weeks at best, it would last a few _hours!_

Panic rising in his throat, Ranma clutched at his hair and whipped his head around in a desperate and futile search for any potential hiding place. As the pace of his breathing quickened and he began to break out in a cold sweat, the same urgent voice in his head from before offered some helpful advice.

**_Your father is going to kill you._ **

Ranma had to concede to the mystery thoughts on this occasion. They were absolutely right.


	5. Yamato Nadeshiko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Turns out there's a stifling presence at the Tendo dojo (beyond the OBVIOUS one), as well as a surprising ally.

_Okay, okay. Stop panicking._ Ranma paced back and forth, trying not to scream. _There HAS to be a way to fix this._ He glanced at the paper bag on the floor containing his purchases. _Tie them in a plastic bag with a rock and huck ‘em in the koi pond? No, pops spends too much time being thrown into there. THINK, Ranma, THINK!_

Kasumi. Kasumi would help. She took everything in stride, he’d just explain that he bought some stuff to help keep himself decent, and gave a female name at the store to avoid questions! Perfectly reasonable! Heck, she’d probably have a good laugh about it! There was light at the end of this tunnel after all!

Ranma burst out of his room clutching the bag, slamming the sliding door into the frame so hard it sounded like a gunshot. With a rictus grin and barely controlled breathing, he set off down the hallway towards the stairs, hoping to find Kasumi alone in the kitchen. It was at that moment, however, that Nabiki poked her head out of her doorway, lifting a felt headphone pad off of her ear and looking towards the Saotome’s room with annoyance. Her eyebrows quickly went from furrowed to raised with interest when she saw the still-red haired and buxom martial artist clutching a shopping bag like it was the nuclear football.

_Ah,_ Ranma thought, mortified. _The light was an oncoming train._

He saw her glance into his bag. Looking down, he realized that in his hurry he hadn’t bothered to cover the bras in scrap newspaper, and there may as well have been a big neon sign sticking out. _Well, I’ve led a good life,_ he thought as blood retreated from his extremities and his heart did its best to hammer itself out of his chest. He then spent a second reflecting on the actual events of his life and frowned slightly from the unpleasant realization before remembering what was happening. “Oh, h-hey Nabs!” he said, trying his hardest to quell the panic that was once again rising with renewed vigor. “Can you, uh, keep a secret?”

To his surprise, the smile she gave him was free of its usual mercenary edge. “You know what? I think I can.”

“My goodness, what was that noise?”

The two turned towards the stairs to see Kasumi looking into the hallway, concerned. A few seconds later she was joined by Soun and Ryoga from further corners of the property (Genma would undoubtedly be subtly moving pieces on the shogi board during this unprecedented opportunity).

“Oh, it was nothing Kasumi!”, Nabiki said with a smile to her older sister, grabbing the bag from Ranma with surprising speed. “I just got a bit excited with opening my door when Ranma here got back with the stuff I asked him to get for me today.”

“Oh my…” Kasumi clasped her hands to her chest, and with a quick glance towards Ranma, asked “You didn’t have the poor boy buy you anything… _improper,_ did you?” She began to both blush and look very annoyed, which were two emotions that Ranma was unaccustomed to seeing on her normally serene face. “It’s just that I remember cleaning your room that one time when I came across that… that _thing-”_

“Ew! No!” Nabiki shouted, cutting her sister off. She looked genuinely flustered for a moment, which spooked Ranma even more. “First of all, don’t bring that up in front of two house guests _and dad,”_ she said while punctuating the last bit with a glare towards her father and Ryoga, who gulped and quickly ducked down the stairs. “And second, I would _not_ send a _kid_ into a-”, she paused and looked at the confused face of the boy next to her, a blush forming on even her usually carefully controlled face. “...into one of _those_ shops. Geez!”

Ranma couldn’t help but feel he was missing something important. He glanced back and forth between the two sisters, normally by far the calmest presences in the Tendo household now both glaring at each other after uncharacteristically emotional outbursts. He felt that he should at least contribute something to break the lengthening silence.

“I, er, I’m sorry ‘bout the noise, Kasumi.”, he said, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.

With that, the spell was broken and both of the Tendo girls looked at him as if he had just teleported there.

“A _hem,_ well,” Kasumi said, apparently mollified. “It’s not your fault Ranma, no need to apologize. I should head back down, Akane should be home soon.” The tall girl turned around more stiffly than normal, shoulders squared as she headed downstairs. Ranma had never seen her like this.

Nabiki let out a breath that Ranma didn’t know she had been holding. “Well, I think I managed to handle that okay.” She ran a hand through her short bob of hair to make sure it was still in place and looked back at Ranma. “Lively Sunday, eh Saotome?”

“I’m confused,” he responded. “What was _that_ all about? Why’d Kasumi get like that? An’ what sorta store is it you wouldn’t send me into?”

Nabiki couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Wow, that training journey really left you naive, huh? Well kiddo, the first two questions are answered by the third.” She grinned at him and opened the door to her room wider. “C’mon, I’ll let you in on that secret if you tell me yours.”

Gulping, Ranma nodded and stepped into Nabiki’s bedroom.

____________________

  
  


Practically throwing herself down onto her bed, Nabiki gestured for Ranma to sit beside her as she began rifling through the bag. Nervously he did so, wincing as she inspected the white bra in her hands, immediately focusing on the “Ranko” embroidered along the apex of the left cup in deep purple thread.

“Oh how sweet, you had them personalized.” She said with a sarcastic sweetness, eyes finally in the familiar half-lidded position. “Well, personalized for someone named Ranko, anyway.”

“...”

“What’s up with that, Ran…” Nabiki left the end of his name hanging very purposefully, like the suffix of Damocles.

“...Ma, definitely ma.” Ranma finally replied, doing everything to keep his voice from shaking. He didn’t need Nabiki of all people getting any funny ideas. “I thought it’d be a good idea to make sure these didn’t get mixed up in yer’s or Akane’s stuff, right? Figured Kasumi’d be understandin’ about it, seein’ as I’m topless around here so much an’ all.” His chest heaved as he gave a deep sigh when he remembered the snap decision he made at the store. “Only… only it felt like it’d be weird to give the ladies there a boy’s name, yeah? So I just kinda… gave ‘em a girl version of it.”

Nabiki nodded. She knew better than to probe any farther. _Besides, people reveal so much more when they think your questions are THEIR idea in the first place-_ No, no. She had to shut that part of herself off for once. She knew it wasn’t the time.

“Hm, about Kasumi. I’m not sure going to her with these would be the… best idea, Ranma.” It was an odd thing, Ranma thought, to see the normally aloof middle Tendo sister look so genuinely concerned. “You might not have picked up on everything that was going on in that little show just now, but I’m sure you’ve gathered that my big sis is very… _traditional,_ for lack of a better word.”

The martial artist nodded. He wasn’t the best at reading people, but anyone who knew Kasumi Tendo for more than 15 seconds would know that she was essentially grown in a lab to be the perfect homemaker. She wouldn’t look terribly out of place in a pre-war period piece.

“Don’t see how that’d matter, though. Just means she thinks I gotta be decent more often, right?”

Nabiki inhaled as though she had a response planned, but evidently it died in her throat. It was surreal, seeing her so… unsure? Ranma’s brain almost refused to make the connection between the word and the mob boss of Furinkan high sitting next to him. However, said mob boss was currently gnawing on the knuckle of her index finger while giving him a decidedly nervous look. The effect was extremely unnerving if you knew her as well as Ranma did.

“See… the thing about Kasumi, is, well…” Nabiki paused, searching for the right words. “She has… _ideas_ about how people should act. You remember how she reacted when Akane came home from the fight? With the short hair?”

Ranma nodded. The way she had screamed that day, you’d think the hair that got cut was her own.

“Well, what you probably didn’t know was that until she was 8 or 9 she kept it short. Loved it short, she was always annoyed at the work it took to keep it clean once it got past her neck.”

Ranma cocked his head to the side in confusion. “Well then why’d she grow it out? Must’a taken years.”

Nabiki’s unsure features hardened slightly. “Kasumi didn’t approve. She told Akane that Dr. Tofu wouldn’t like her anymore if she didn’t act more feminine.” Her face darkened. “She said it was like she had a _boy_ for a sister.”, she spat.

“I… wow.” Ranma didn’t know what to say. “That… that doesn’t seem right? Like, for a sister to act, I mean.” His eyes suddenly widened in realization. “Oh god, is _that_ why she hates bein’ called a tomboy so much?”

Nabiki nodded.

“Oh man, I gotta go apologize for…”, he paused, running all of his interactions with the youngest Tendo through his head. “...everything, I guess.”

“That’d be a start”, Nabiki replied with her usual smirk. Her face quickly fell again as her thoughts returned to her little sister. Akane had some issues she needed to work out, and living under the same roof as Kasumi hadn’t done her any favors in that regard. She promised herself that she wouldn’t start that discussion with her though, unless things came to a head. Glancing at the redhead next to her, she allowed herself to smile slightly. No use rushing things.

“And now do you understand why going to Kasumi with these bras might not be the best idea, Ranma?”, she asked. “You wearing women’s underwear would probably cause her to short circuit.”

“I… guess?”, he looked unsure. “But like, I gotta wear somethin’, right? An’ I think enough people at school have seen my boobs to last me a lifetime, I gotta be prepared for the next time I get splashed.”

“Very true. But, tell me Ranma,” Nabiki said, digging through the bag and pulling out the crumpled receipt. “How many plain white tank tops do you think you could have gotten for 3,000 yen?”

Ranma sat there, dumbfounded. “ _That wasn’t the point,”_ he wanted to say. _“I’m a girl half the time, and it shouldn’t hurt so much just to run around!”_ What came out instead was “...guess I hadn’t thought of that.”

Nabiki didn’t say anything, and instead seemed to take a special interest in the illegible articles in the ripped and crumpled newspaper left in the bag. It was clear she wasn’t going to fill the silence.

After a minute it became too much for Ranma. “...Nabiki?” The older girl dropped last year’s news and looked at him. “If it’s such a big deal, the uh, underwear that is, then what was with that whole dress up session last week?”

Nabiki crossed her arms and gave him a stern look. “Well for one thing, you were running around the house in nothing but boxers. No matter which form you’re in, that’s distracting.” She dropped the serious act and winked. “Plus, it was extremely fun, for me at least. As for why Kasumi joined in, that’s harder to say. I can’t exactly read her thoughts. If I had to guess, your protests probably played a big role. That and the fact that you were wearing boy’s underwear.”

Ranma was handed the bag, which he grabbed a hold of like flotsam in the middle of the ocean. There was so much he was processing that it was a while before he remembered that there was a third question he had asked before entering Nabiki’s room, and a secret she had promised.

“Sssoooo…” he began, slowly looking at the girl next to him who was sweating like she had clearly been hoping he would forget about what he was going to ask next. “What was all that about the thing Kasumi found in your room? And the store?”

Gulping, Nabiki considered briefly how best to broach the subject. How much did this kid know about the world beyond katas and training and what did she need to spell out? She figured she’d start with vague and work from there.

“Well, um, Kasumi is kind of uh, kind of the type of girl who believes that people shouldn’t, uh…” _Come on Tendo, you can do this._ “S-shouldn’t have, um. _Relations_ until they’re married.” She looked for recognition in the boy’s face and found his brow furrowed in thought.

“I mean, that’s old fashioned an’ all, but where’s the shop enter into it?”, he asked.

_Oh thank god,_ she thought. _I can work with this._ “W-well, Ranma. The thing is. The thing, you see, is that recently I made a purchase. A personal purchase. From a shop. A specialty shop. A shop that specializes in selling, uh.” _Oh fuck this._ “It was a vibrator, Ranma.” Nabiki buried her face in her hands, unable to maintain eye contact. “I bought a sex toy and Kasumi found it.”

Ranma found himself blushing nearly as hard as she was. Taking a deep breath, he got off the bed and knelt in front of her. "Well Nabiki," he said in the most somber voice he could muster, "I think it's only fair that you get to kill me for this." He hung his head and drew a line across his neck with a finger. "Make it a clean cut, will ya Nabs?"

Unimpressed, she put on a show of idly inspecting her nails. "Mm. I _would,_ but daddy put the katana in storage with the good silver."

The boy in front of her looked up, and she looked down to meet him. They both grinned at each other, and with the tension broken they both broke out laughing. It was a while before they managed to stop.

____________________

  
  


Akane’s movie day was going… awkwardly.

She had been so excited to see the old Toho films with her friends, too. Yuka and Sayuri always had plans of their own on the weekend, and she thought it’d be nice to finally do something with them outside of school. Things had started up promisingly enough. They had bought their tickets, found an empty corner (not too difficult, considering that the headlining movie for the afternoon was approaching 35 years old), and took their seats. Yuka checked quickly for witnesses before grinning and pulling a bag of sour gummies from somewhere within her clothing, while Sayuri undid the ribbon in her hair to reveal a box of pocky. It was at this point that Akane rolled her eyes and left during the opening credits to buy herself some popcorn at concessions.

It was when Akane returned to see Sayuri popping a stick of pocky into Yuka’s mouth that she realized that she was somehow the third wheel in a group of all girls.

The human brain is a marvelous thing. Ask any neurologist and you’ll get one of a number of examples of the sheer wonder of a 3 pound lump of fat, water, and protein calculating the digits of pi, or writing a beautiful poem, or trying and failing to remember who that guy was, in that movie? The one with the shark?

The very _best_ example of the brain’s prodigious might, however, is its ability to construct an elaborate web of explanations in order to ignore what’s right in front of it. And so it was, as Akane watched her friends intimately feed each other their smuggled sweets, that she landed on the only narrative her mind would allow: That this was all “normal girl stuff”, and the fact that she was so flustered by it was more proof that she wasn’t a normal girl.

This mighty fortress of thought weathered attack after attack from all sides over the course of the Godzilla feature, but managed to hold on magnificently. Akane barely noticed the collapse of the west battery as Sayuri shrieked and clung to Yuka’s arm. Glancing around, Akane spied a couple of girls doing the same thing. To their boyfriends. _Nothing strange here,_ her brain interjected as soldiers shored up defences. _All the other women here today came alone._ Barely recovered, Akane settled into watching the movie when the ramparts were blown apart at the sound of cooing coming from her friends. Slowly, eyes moving quite separately from the rest of her face, she looked to her left to see the two of them leaning into one another, with Sayuri nuzzled deeply into the crook of Yuka’s neck. _This is fine,_ Akane’s brain came in to say again, though unable to hide its frantic tone as fires began spreading. _Girls are just more physically intimate with their friends than guys are! Everyone knows that!_

Akane looked back to the screen, eyes staring blankly ahead and no longer even attempting to pay attention to the movie. Things seemed to be wrapping up, a man in a big rubber suit was wading into a pool filled with toy boats, a bunch of men on a boat were looking at its death throes as the bubble jets were turned on, and before she knew it the credits began to roll. As the other patrons filed out of the mostly-empty theater, the three girls hung back, Akane noticing that her friends seemed to be taking special care to leave their seats spotless. It was in the window between the last person leaving and the usher coming in to clean the floors that Yuka gave Sayuri a mischievous grin and planted a quick kiss on the darker-haired girl's lips.

The gunpowder magazines exploded, and so did Akane.

“S-stop!” she shouted. Blushing furiously and looking around, she lowered her voice to a hiss. “Y-you can’t do that!”

The two broke apart, giggling, and Yuka gave her friend a quick admonishment. “Jeez Akane, didn’t know you were such a prude.”, she said with a grin.

“Mm, she’s not wrong though,” Sayuri chimed in. “If the old usher had walked in we might have given him a heart attack.”

Akane’s friends burst out laughing as she glared at them, red-faced, and sure enough a man with wispy gray hair in his early 60s came in, pushing a wheeled trash can. He glanced at the noise being made by the three stragglers and shrugged before beginning to clean. Before any third party could bear witness to her friends’ perversions, Akane practically pushed the other two girls out of the theater.

____________________

  
  


While the couple were still blinking in the sudden sunlight, trying to get their bearings, Akane grabbed both of them by the wrist. She dragged them into a nearby alley, and, making sure they were alone, rounded on them.

“What on Earth do you think you were doing?”, she asked, nearly hyperventilating.

“We were kissing, Akane.” Yuka replied with infuriating calm. “We _are_ girlfriends, after all.”

_“GIRLFRIENDS?!”,_ Akane shouted, before going pale and looking around wildly for anyone who might have heard. Finding the alley still empty, she composed herself and asked “D-does that mean that you t-two are, um”, she gulped, and brought her voice down to a conspiratorial whisper. _“...L-lesbians?”_

The two girls looked at each other, and then back to their frantic friend. "I mean… yes?", Yuka said, bemused. "Are you not?"

"N-no, I'm not…", The short-haired girl's lips struggled to form the right words. "T-that is, I mean, what makes you think I'm a…" She trailed off, not willing to complete that particular sentence.

"It's not that we wanted to assume anything, Akane, and I'm _very_ sorry if we did, but um," Sayuri fidgeted with her ponytail as she spoke. "You're always going on about how much you hate boys. Even beyond the ones who fight you in the morning, you don't have any male friends or anything." The speed of her hand running through her hair increased as she continued. "R-remember how in 7th grade you were banned from truth or dare because Eiko got frustrated how you ‘never told the truth’ about what boy you had a crush on?”

“Yeah, we at least learned how to lie to that one.”, Yuka cut in bluntly.

“Yuka!” Sayuri said, aghast. “Now is _not_ the time!”

“Honestly, Akane,” Yuka continued, waving away her girlfriend. “The fact that you didn’t take Kuno-senpai up on his offer to go on a date with him first thing basically cemented that you were gay at the start of high school.”

This was enough to shock Akane out of her mental tailspin for a second. “ _Kuno?!”,_ she said with revulsion. “Who in their right mind would go out with _him?”_

“Every straight girl in school.”, Yuka replied. “He’s tall, handsome, rich, the son of the principal, and quite the romantic, frankly.” With each virtue listed she punctuated it by counting it off on her fingers. “They’re all pretty mad you’re taking up all of his attention, actually.”

Akane could feel the ground beneath her feet crumbling away. What she needed was something to latch onto, something she could count on. A rock.

After a moment’s thought, she believed she found it.

“Kasumi…”, she began quietly, before swallowing her uncertainty and beginning again. “Kasumi always told me that I should wait for the right boy. The one I’m going to marry someday.” She steeled her gaze at her friends and clenched her hand into a triumphant fist. “So I am _not_ just going to date the first boy who asks me out, okay?”

To her surprise, both Yuka _and_ Sayuri rolled their eyes at her.

“Um, Akane,” Sayuri said, stroking her chin. “Not to put this the wrong way, but Kasumi is kind of, well-”

“Your big sis is a raging homophobe, Akane.” Yuka clearly did not have any desire to be gentle about this. "The last time we were over she practically told us to stay away from you before you got ‘ideas’.”

Akane was stunned. She couldn’t be hearing this. “N-no, what? You have to have it all wrong, guys.” As she spoke, Akane began to take shaky steps backwards toward the street. “Kasumi would never say that to my friends-”

Sayuri looked miserable. “I-I’m afraid she did, Akane. Didn’t you think it was weird that we sat at opposite corners of the table?” She stared intently at her shoes, unable to look her friend in the eye.

“Listen, I’m sure your sis loves you.” Yuka said, softening slightly. “And I’m sure she’s doing what she thinks is best for you.” She sighed. “But what she thinks is best for you and what _is_ best for you are different things. You aren’t Kasumi, Akane.”

_You aren’t Kasumi._ This was it. This was what she had been dreading, and it had been lurking underneath this whole conversation like some crocodile waiting beneath the water. All those years of growing out her hair, of fruitlessly trying to learn to cook, of imitating her perfect, beautiful, _feminine_ sister Kasumi. To not be some kind of boy of a sister. It was all pointless, everyone at school saw right through it.

Akane turned and ran, sobbing. She heard Yuka call out after her, but she didn’t turn back. She couldn’t. She had taken the bus to the theater, but she would run all the way home. Whatever, she was just making up for the jog she missed due to the morning’s excitement.

____________________

  
  


By the time she got home, Akane was gasping, drenched in sweat, and aching all over. Precisely zero parts of her outfit was designed for running, and she hadn’t done any warming up. Staggering into the Tendo home, she found her eldest sister dutifully preparing dinner like she did every night.

“Oh, welcome home Akane!” Kasumi said, not turning around from the stove. “How was the movie?”

“It was fine.”

Akane’s flat, exhausted voice was enough to make Kasumi worried enough to lower the heat and take a look at her baby sister. What she saw caused her to cover her mouth in surprise.

“Goodness, Akane! What on Earth happened to you?”

“I don’t want to talk about it”, she said, before heading through the living room. “What I really want to do right now is take a bath.”

As she made her way through the house, she noticed Nabiki and Ranma coming down the stairs. Both seemed to be in remarkably high spirits and they were chatting animatedly, which Akane thought was odd. Her fiancé was in his female form, wearing a new shirt. He also seemed… perkier? Akane blushed in embarrassment and anger at herself when she realized where she had been staring. But there was something else that was setting off subtle alarm bells in her head, and it was taking her awhile to realize exactly what. It took until they had crossed the room for it to click.

Her husband-to-be was wearing one of Nabiki’s old shirts.

  
Maybe Ranma really _was_ the boy she would marry one day, Akane thought miserably as she trudged to the furo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Realizing after finishing the bit with Akane, Yuka, and Sayuri) oh huh Kasumi is just my real-life aunt


	6. Stupid, Rotten, and Ugly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anger, apologies, and ancillary actors with amorous intent abound!

Closing the door to the furo (and hanging up the “occupied” sign that she had made the day after the Saotomes arrived), Akane disrobed as the tub filled with steaming water. Testing the water temperature gingerly with one toe, she stepped in and submerged her body up to her neck, feeling the pain in her aching muscles melt away like ice in the hot bath.

Now if only she could do the same thing with her aching brain.

She shouldn’t have run from her friends like that. When she saw them at school tomorrow she’d have to… apologize to them, she supposed. She just found it hard to believe that Kasumi would say something so horrible to her friends, her oldest sister had always been so nice to her.

Akane sighed as she sunk deeper, hot water lapping into her ears and her face tilted upwards to keep her nostrils above the water line. Her hair finally getting wet served as a useful reminder that she no longer needed to worry about washing it being the ordeal it had been for years, which was nice. Idly she grabbed the bottle of shampoo off of the shower shelf and turned it over in her hands. She remembered with a smile how when she had decided to grow her hair out Kasumi had lit up and immediately walked her baby sister through what would become her hair care routine for half of her life. When they finished rinsing the lilac-scented conditioner from young Akane’s black hair, her sister had told her to wait a moment before excitedly running off to her bedroom and returning with something behind her back. Kasumi had told her to close her eyes, and when Akane did so she felt the gentle hands of Kasumi place a small object in hers. After being told to open her eyes again, she looked down to see a travel-sized version of her sister’s bottle of conditioner in her palm.

“That should last you a bit,” Kasumi said, beaming. “At least until I can go shopping.”

Her pleasant trip down memory lane was interrupted, however, by remembering that she had absolutely hated every second of growing her hair out, and wrestling with her mane always left her aggravated rather than refreshed like the ladies in the commercials.

So why did she feel so attached to the bottle in her hands?

Well, it was because…  _ Because it made Kasumi happy,  _ she realized.  _ She said living with me was like having a boy for a sister, and growing out my hair and smiling at the brushes and conditioners she got me made her happy. _

Akane replaced the bottle on the shelf and stepped out of the tub, reaching for her towel. As she dried herself off, the question posed by that last thought finally asserted itself in her mind.

_ But did Kasumi being happy make ME happy? _

_________________

  
  


Dressed in more casual clothes than she had arrived in, Akane sat in the living room where Nabiki and Ranma were still sitting next to each other, chatting. Her fiancé looked slightly more annoyed than he had coming down the stairs, but that seemed to be ebbing away to be replaced by mild interest. The conversation was strangely hushed, and while she’d  _ certainly  _ never purposefully eavesdrop she was intrigued by what she did end up hearing. Snippets such as “...figure we can charge 1,000 yen an album…” and “...an’ yer sayin’ you’d foot the bill for the clothes?” didn’t make much sense to Akane. It  _ sounded  _ like her older sister was trying to rope Ranma into one of her money-making schemes, and that the poor boy was falling for it. The clothes bit threw Akane for a bit of a loop, though. Nabiki had never knowingly paid anyone for anything when she thought she could get away with it.

“What are you two talking about?” she asked. “Not that it’s my business, but I don’t want you dragging Ranma into anything illegal.”

“Oh, sis.” Nabiki said, looking up from her calculator and putting it aside. Beside her, Ranma seemed to tense up slightly. “How long have you been there?”

“Just a minute or so,” she said truthfully. Nabiki’s air of controlled casualness coupled with Ranma’s reaction made her frown. “You’re  _ not  _ doing anything illegal, right?”, legitimate worry creeping into her voice.

Her sister held up her hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Whoa, whoa! Perish the thought, sis!” she said. “I promise what’s going on here is on the level. Maybe more so than anything I’ve ever done to make some cash.”

Akane saw the redhead next to her revert to the annoyed expression he had worn when she first entered the room, and could just hear Ranma mutter  _ “Yeah, least I know it’s happenin’ this time ‘round.”  _ This earned him a swift elbow in the ribs from Nabiki and the both of them a pair of raised eyebrows from Akane.

“...Whatever. Just keep me out of it.” she said, eying the nearly identical forced smiles plastered onto the faces of her sister and fiancé. It really wasn’t worth getting involved in. Looking Ranma up and down once more, however, Akane found that there  _ was  _ one thing still bothering her. “So Ranma,” she said, eyes lingering on the striped top with the distressingly low neckline (oop, eyes back to his face) that  _ undeniably  _ was a shirt from somewhere in the recesses of Nabiki’s closet. “What’s with that shirt you’re wearing?”

Looking down at himself and tugging at the fabric slightly as if just now noticing it, Ranma thought for a second before answering. “Well, the shirt I wore this morning got wet,” he said, gesturing at his current form, “and the silk one has that big rip in it.” Having counted out two fingers, he paused while making a show of doing some mental calculations. “...An’ that’s both my shirts. So Nabs here let me borrow one of hers so I ain’t runnin’ around with my boobs out.”, he finished with a grin.

Before she could deliver the proper barb about her fiancé never having an issue with baring it for the entire household before, she was interrupted by the appearance of both their fathers. Genma Saotome, despite his bulk, could move surprisingly stealthily when he wanted to, and none of the teens in the living room had noticed his presence until he was standing in full view. Soun was peeking out from behind his friend, nervously trying to bring him back to their game. The taller yet thinner man, despite being a powerful martial artist in his own right, seemed almost insubstantial next to the nearly visible aura of fury radiating off of Genma.

_ “WHAT on EARTH are you WEARING, boy?”,  _ the bespectacled man asked in a hiss of barely controlled anger. Somehow, it was so much worse than shouting.

_ “P-pops!” _ Ranma stammered. “I-it’s uh, y’see, I was outta shirts, a-and uh, N-Nabiki lent me one ‘a h-hers, s-so I wouldn’t hafta run around naked-”

“Don’t you remember why we went on that journey in the first place?”, the large man growled.  _ “Huh?!”  _ Ranma was on his feet now, and slowly backing away from his father. “Or did you forget that you’re supposed to be a man amongst men?”

"I-I-I'm sorry, pops…" Ranma, already shorter than average in his current form, almost seemed to be shrinking into himself as he shuffled backwards into the yard.

"Er, Saotome," Soun began, putting on his best conciliatory voice. The faux jovial tone was not made any more convincing by the nervous waver audibly creeping its way in. "P-perhaps we could discuss this over dinner and some  _ soothing tea!",  _ the last two words being shouted back towards Kasumi in the house.

_ "I can raise my own son, Tendo!"  _

Both father and son had backed into the yard, with Ranma having reached the edge of the koi pond. By this point Ryoga, who had been catching up on some much needed sleep under the tree by the pond, had woken up from the commotion and was looking between his friend and Genma with concern.

"You are taking that girly shit off, and we are heating up a kettle. I am  _ NOT  _ dealing with this again." To underscore his point, Genma grabbed at Ranma's borrowed top and began to wrench it upwards.

_ "NO!" _

The shout came not only from Ranma, but from Nabiki as well. With the scene unfolding outside, it was doubtful that anyone other than Akane noticed the very genuine panic in her expression. In the moment when everyone looked to the shout from the house, Ranma took the opportunity presented to him. Genma, already looming over his son, soon found the loose fabric of his gi being grabbed and a small arm wrap around the back of his neck. By the time he realized what was happening, it was too late. A leg stuck out and slammed into his knees, and Ranma was flipping his father over in a Harai Goshi throw directly into the koi pond. Ryoga, having just been woken from his nap, now found himself avoiding the resulting splash in a series of frantic leaps backward.

After a few tense seconds of silence with 5 sets of eyes watching the rippling surface, a waterlogged panda emerged. With a glare at the redhead it stalked off, growling. If a panda could use swear words, this one would be.

As Genma lumbered off to who-knows-where (one had to assume that there was a bar somewhere that would serve pandas), the residents of the Tendo household slowly congregated in the living room. Though it was still a while until dinner, everyone took stock of their frazzled nerves and thought it would be for the best if tea were prepared. As Soun raised a shaky cup to his mouth, Ranma idly glanced at his own and wondered if a change to his male form and the resulting tightness of his bra would be enough to kill him. If not, then destroying Nabiki’s shirt would certainly do the job.

The whole table was quiet, the only sound that of tea being sipped, until Akane finally broke the silence after spending some time watching Nabiki. “So sis,” she asked. “What was up with that outburst during the fight? You haven’t worn that shirt in forever.”

Akane watched carefully. After gulping a too-large mouthful of scalding tea in surprise, her sister took a second to compose herself (and was that a glance towards Ranma? If she hadn’t been watching carefully Akane doubted she would have noticed the flick of her pupils towards the redhead.) Nabiki cleared her throat and said “Out of rotation or not, it’s still my shirt. And I doubt Mr. Saotome’s fuzzy jobless butt can afford to replace it.” Turning towards her father, she put on her most winning smile. “Oh, that reminds me, daddy,” she said sweetly. “I think it would be for the best if we made a few changes to our rooming arrangements…”

_________________

  
  


Negotiating the bunk swap had taken the better part of the evening, the discussion extending its way through dinner and spilling into what Kasumi colloquially referred to as “wind-down time”. Surprisingly, Soun didn’t put up nearly as much of a protest to Nabiki’s proposed changes as she thought he would. The  _ real  _ problem was Akane.

“You can’t let Ranma stay in the same room as Ryoga!” she protested towards the end of the night, color rising in her cheeks. She remembered the revelation about her friends from earlier in the day and compared it to the muscular boy next to her practically straddling her fiancé early that morning. “W-who  _ knows  _ what they’ll get up to?”

Reactions to this ranged from Soun (obviously tired of this whole discussion), Ranma and Ryoga (determinedly looking anywhere in the room aside from at each other), Kasumi (genuine polite confusion), and Nabiki (extremely fake polite confusion).

“What do you mean, Akane?” Kasumi asked, puzzled. “They’re both boys, they can’t ‘get up to’ anything.” She looked at the two martial artists sitting next to each other. Laundry had been done and Ranma had taken the opportunity to change back into his normal attire (Kasumi had taken the time to mend his favored silk shirt), as well as his normal form. Despite the increase in size making the situation on that side of the table rather…  _ close, _ both boys seemed to be making a determined effort to avoid contact of the skin  _ or  _ eye variety. If Kasumi didn’t have some considerable blinders equipped when it came to this sort of thing, she might have interpreted this behavior more accurately than she did.

_“Yes,_ Akane~”, Nabiki chimed in, smiling. _“Please_ do go on. Whatever could our two favorite boys get up to~?”

Before Nabiki could goad her sister further (and while Akane was still choking out angry consonant sounds), Soun sighed and put down his cup of tea. The sound from his long-silent end of the table managed to grab everyone’s attention. “That’s  _ quite  _ enough, both of you. Nabiki was right when she said that Genma’s habit of late nights probably play hell with his son’s sleep schedule. In any case, this will make mornings simpler.”

When he was met with several confused stares, Soun sighed again. “You all didn’t  _ honestly  _ think that the boy wasn’t getting enrolled at Furinkan High, did you?” When Ranma, Ryoga, and  _ especially  _ Akane’s jaws dropped in shock at this news, he muttered to himself, “I swear, you nomadic types will be the death of me…" Looking at the trio of teenagers sharing a side of the table, he gave them what could only be described as "a look" and said, "Hibiki-kun, from what I understand of your familial situation, you're essentially homeless. Given that you haven't seen either of your parents or your house in years, for all intents and purposes you are in fact staying under my roof, and that means following my rules. Education is non-negotiable."

Akane had sat there, stewing the entire time. Finally, her temper boiled over as she slammed her hands on the table. "So that's just official, I guess?!  _ FINE!",  _ she shouted. "This is  _ just  _ what I need! More stupid, rotten, ugly  _ BOYS  _ in my life!!" Pushing herself up to her feet, she stomped out of the room. Despite the distance the slam of Akane's bedroom door was loud enough to cause the people still at the table to flinch.

Looking at his friend, Ranma sighed and began to stand up himself. "We should… probably go an' see if she's okay."

Ryoga gulped nervously and glanced at the stairs. "D-do we have to?"

_________________

  
  


The two boys stopped outside of Akane's room, helpfully identified by her name written on a duck-shaped plate screwed to the door. "Oh, that's cute.", Ryoga said, before noticing his friend's withering look. "What? It is! It suits her…" he mumbled.

"Look, we can talk about yer crush on my fiancée  _ later-" _

_ "Your WHAT?" _

_ Hoo boy,  _ Ranma thought. "...but,  _ right now,  _ we gotta check on Akane." Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door.

"Leave.", came a muffled voice through the door.

"Akane?" Ranma asked. "Ryoga an' I wanna talk, if that's alright."

"If you must."

Looking at Ryoga and shrugging, Ranma opened the door to Akane's room. As he entered, he saw Akane lying face down on her bed, a couple of damp spots clearly visible on either side of her head. Turning back towards the entrance, he  _ also  _ saw Ryoga touching his fingertips together and sweating.

"You comin' in or what, man?"

"B-but this is a  _ girl's  _ room!" Ryoga said as he began blushing. "I-I've never been in a g-girl's room before…"

Ranma looked at his surroundings. Aside from a pastel yellow bedspread and pink curtains, the room had basically no indicators as to the gender of its occupant. "I think you'll be fine, dude."

Crossing the threshold into parts unknown, Ryoga seemed too overwhelmed to speak, at the moment content to nervously dart his eyes around the room. This suited Ranma fine, as it would let him talk uninterrupted for a while. He pulled the chair from her desk over to the bed and sat down.

“Listen, ‘Kane.” he began. “First of all, I want to apologize.” The light sniffling sounds coming from the bed stopped for a sec, and Ranma was pretty sure that meant she was listening. “Mostly I want to say I’m sorry for always callin’ you a tomboy. I was… talkin’ with Nabiki earlier and she told me why it upset you so much.” At this, Akane’s head jerked up and she propped herself up to look at her fiancé, mortified.

“What on Earth did she  _ tell  _ you about me?” she demanded.

“A-Akane, please don’t get mad!” Ranma leaned back with his hands out in front of him while Ryoga’s attention was finally drawn into the conversation. “I-I just had to go to her for some help an’ I told her I had wanted to go to Kasumi with it.” His voice lowered as he remembered the conversation. “Then she uh. She kinda told me about how it wouldn’t be a good idea. An’ about why you grew your hair out.”

Ranma thought the black-haired girl looked almost relieved for a second before looking back at him, slightly miffed. “It still wasn’t a very nice thing to say, even if you didn’t know about all that.” Before Ranma could prostrate himself before her with more apologies, she gave him a smile. “But thank you, though.”

As her gaze moved over to Ryoga, who was standing stock still and watching the conversation intently, she frowned. “While you’re both here, I guess… I guess I should apologize too.” Akane pulled herself up into a seated position at the side of her bed. “I… shouldn’t have insinuated that you guys would  _ ‘get up to’ _ anything if you shared a room.”

As she watched her future husband and his best friend look at each other in shock and then quickly look away and blush, Akane sighed lightly. “...Or at the very least, I’m sorry for always calling you a pervert, Ranma. I’m… I’m not exactly one to judge, I don’t think. Same goes for you too, Ryoga. Sorry for what I said in the tree.”

Ryoga jumped at the mention of his name. Blushing even harder now, he did his best to look at the girl who had just apologized to him. “T-thank you, Akane.” He gave her a stiff bow. “A-apology accepted!” he nearly shouted.

“Y-yeah, thanks Akane. It means a lot.” Ranma said, trying not to think about some of the implications contained within the apology, both about him and Ryoga  _ and  _ about Akane herself. What he did not need right now was to be both confused, flustered, and sad at once. Nevertheless, he felt better. Lighter, like a weight had been lifted off of his soul. This was honestly the best conversation he’d had with Akane since his first few hours at the Tendo’s, before the furo incident.

“Oh, Ranma,” Akane asked. “If you don’t mind me asking, what did you need Nabiki’s help with?”

Feeling his burgeoning good mood implode on itself and sink to the pit of his stomach, Ranma gulped as his mouth went dry. “Uh, okay. I…  _ guess  _ I can tell ya.” Steeling himself, he looked at his fiancée. “But first, you have to promise me you’ll remember what you just said about me not bein’ a perv.” Thinking for a second, he turned to his friend. “And  _ yer  _ gonna have to remember what you said to me this morning.”

_________________

  
  


All in all, Ranma thought, the two of them had taken the news of his new undergarments rather well. They hadn’t said much, but both were slowly nodding by the end when he talked about how it was the most practical decision. He thought it best not to mention the name on them, however. Or how comfortable the regular bra felt. Maybe later, he told himself. Best not to skate on the pond before testing the ice.

As the three of them were getting ready for school in the morning, Ranma was surprised to learn that Genma did indeed stumble into the house and pass out on his futon sometime around 2 AM. He had grown accustomed to learning the exact time his father went to bed by the sudden thud and sound of snoring waking him up in the middle of the night, which Ranma now realized probably contributed a lot to his general grogginess in the morning. As for the room switch itself, Ranma was now stationed in the guest room on the first floor with Ryoga, which while it certainly had its benefits (an uninterrupted night of sleep and a closet corner where he could stash his bras without worrying about someone finding them), the room was definitely not designed for two people. Frankly, it wasn’t designed for  _ one  _ person, being easily the smallest room in the house separated from the living room by just a shōji, probably meant to be an extension to that room. Things were close, to say the least. But he’d manage. Ryoga was already proving to be a much better sleeping companion than his father.

As the trio approached the gates of Furinkan High, a thought suddenly struck Ranma. “Oh, er, Ryoga,” he said, getting the attention of the boy who he and Akane had wisely decided to station in-between the two of them to minimize the chances of him getting lost. “There’s something you need to know about how our mornings go.”

“Oh my god, that’s right!” Akane said, whipping around. “We completely forgot to tell him, huh?”

“T-tell me what?” Ryoga asked nervously as the group rounded the corner.

As if to answer his question before his friends could, a crowd of men in sporting equipment all shouted “I LOVE YOU, AKANE TENDO!” in one voice as they charged at her. Rolling her eyes and handing Ranma her bag, she set to work pulverizing the hormone-crazed boys vying for her affection.

As Ryoga simply stood there dumbfounded, Ranma smiled and laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Ryoga, old buddy: meet the Hentai Horde.”

_ Oh god,  _ Ryoga thought.  _ Is this what all high schools are like? _

_________________

  
  


“Alright class, it seems we’re once again welcoming a new student into our fold.” The terminally bored-sounding homeroom teacher announced to class F. Ordinarily he’d be chastising the students for whispering and pointing at the boy who had fought Ranma and destroyed half the zoo the previous week, but he had a script to get through. Pushing up his glasses, he did his best to sound chipper. “Please give a warm Furinkan welcome to Ryoga Hibiki and make him feel at home.”

Standing practically to attention at the front of the class and sweating, Ryoga closed his eyes and belted out a quick “I’m very pleased to meet you all!” before returning to staring into the middle distance.

The chatter of the students resumed with greater intensity, conversations overlapping so that only snippets such as “...so  _ polite _ …”, “...you see how  _ jacked _ this guy is…”, and “...cute little fangs…” rising above the ambient noise level. With the introductions complete, however, the homeroom teacher decided it was finally time to exercise his authority.

“A- _ hem.  _ Yes, well. I’m sure you’ll all get a chance to know mister Hibiki after class. For now, young man, please take the empty seat between Tsujitani and Saotome.”

Ryoga nodded and made his way to his seat by Hiroshi (who greeted him politely) and Ranma (who greeted him enthusiastically).

“Dude! This rules!” Ranma said in a stage whisper. “I’m  _ so  _ glad we’re in the same class!”

“Uh, y-yeah, me too.” Ryoga said, looking warily at the unfamiliar boy on his right.

“Oh, uh, this is my pal Hiroshi. An’ behind you is Daisuke. Guys, meet my old buddy Ryoga!”

“Nice to meet you.” Hiroshi said, smiling.

Daisuke, glaring at the new martial artist, said “Guess we’re getting replaced, huh?”

“W-what?” Ryoga looked shocked and immediately turned to his friend for an explanation.

Ranma, for his part, glared back at Daisuke. “Man, what the hell was that for? You ain’t gettin’ replaced!”

Hiroshi smiled slightly. “Oh, don’t worry. Dai’s just still grumpy because he lost money betting on the fight.”

Ranma rolled his eyes, while Ryoga calmed down and looked unimpressed.

“It was  _ 6,000 yen!”  _ Daisuke shot back, momentarily forgetting where he was and earning a piece of chalk to the forehead.

_________________

  
  


As the class bell rang, multiple students crowded around Ryoga, bombarding him with questions. Ranma, while worried that his friend was getting overwhelmed, was glad that it at least wasn’t happening to him for once. While watching the spectacle, he was surprised by a tap on his shoulder from Hiroshi.

“Hey, Ranma. Can I ask you something?”

“Uh, sure thing, man.” he responded.

“Um, well. This is going to sound weird,” Hiroshi said. “But Daisuke and I were at the mall yesterday and this girl started waving at us. She looked like the girl who showed up at the fight last week. I wondered if you knew her?”

_ Think of a lie, fast,  _ Ranma thought. “U-uh yeah! Yeah I do! She’s uh…”  _ Stop thinking, you moron! You’re a martial artist, use your warrior instinct!  _ “S-she’s my sister!”  _ GOD YOUR INSTINCT IS AWFUL. _

Hiroshi raised his eyebrows. “You have a sister? How come you never mentioned her before?”

“Uh, w-well, um, she uh never came up?”

The brown-haired boy shrugged. “Guess that’s fair.” he conceded. Perking up, he asked “What’s her name?”

Unsure if he liked where this was going, Ranma said the only name that came naturally. “Her name’s Ranko.”  _ I should really get better at this. _

_ “Ranko?”  _ Hiroshi started chuckling. “Jeez, your parents were bad with names!”

Suppressing the urge to defend his naming choice, Ranma instead sought refuge in the realm of insulting his father. “Listen, if you met my pops you’d understand. It’s a miracle I’m not ‘Genma Two’.”

The two boys had a good laugh at that, until Hiroshi trailed off and started to nonchalantly run his fingers through his hair in a way that suggested he was anything but.

“Sssooo, uhhh.” He began, not exactly meeting Ranma’s eye. “Any chance you could introduce me?”

Ranma was suddenly  _ very  _ sure he didn’t like where this was going. “You aren’t lookin’ to  _ date _ her, are you?”

Noticing the panic in his friend’s voice, Hiroshi blinked and leaned back slightly. “Uh. I mean not if you’re that protective of her I’m not.”

_ Shit, that’s right. He thinks he’s asking out a girl, not the boy sitting in front of him.  _ “Oh, uh, sorry ‘bout that. It’s just that it’s hard to forget we’re basically the same age, y’know? She’s so much smaller than me that she’s still my baby sister.” Sufficiently calmed down, he thought for a second. “I… can’t guarantee she’ll want to date you. But I can tell her to meet you after school if you like.”

“Oh, that’s great!” Hiroshi brightened up. “Uh, there’s actually this new Chinese place that opened up pretty close to the Tendo’s. It’s called the Nekohanten I think?”

Shuddering slightly at the name, Ranma nevertheless smiled. “Yeah, I’m sure she’d love some Chinese food. She got a taste for it when we were travelin’.”

“Great! So, uh, I guess tell her to meet me there at 4?” Hiroshi said, grinning.

“Yeah, I’ll make sure she knows.” Ranma said, grinning as well.

Outwardly, at least. Inwardly he was screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Hiroshi's last name I absolutely just looked up his Japanese VA, haha.


	7. The Blue Thunder Cometh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh shit it's Kuno time baby

Ranma spent the next few hours with the glassy, thousand-yard stare of a man trying to convince himself that everything was _not_ utterly fucked, which was fortunately close enough to his usual bored one that nobody noticed. While his teacher lectured to students about trigonometry, Ranma’s mind was occupied with the altogether more complex mathematics of calculating precisely what angle he could approach his situation from where he was not in fact going on a date with his friend Hiroshi.

Like actual math, He was doing poorly.

It was absolutely _fine,_ he tried telling himself. It wasn’t a date. _Yes it was._ People go on platonic trips to restaurants all the time. _Adults do. Families do. Groups do. Two teenagers do not._ And even if it _was_ a date, it wasn’t like _Ranma_ asked his friend out. _No, I just said yes._ Sweating now, Ranma pulled out the big guns, his last refuge against the encroaching reality of the situation. Hiroshi hadn’t asked him out, he’d asked Ranko.

**_Ranko doesn’t exist._ **

Ranma’s sharp gasp was luckily masked by the bell for lunch, and everyone pouring out of the classroom or gathering into their respective cliques were too focused on their own conversations and stomachs to notice his shoulders rising and falling in time with his haggard breaths. Ranma figured that if he could just get whatever was going on under control he could eat his lunch in peace and-

“Hey Ranma!” came a familiar female voice. “Do you and Ryoga want to eat lunch here, or… Wait, are you alright?”

_Shit,_ he thought. _The one day Akane doesn’t grab lunch with her friends._

“Y-yeah, Akane!” he said, turning towards the concerned face of his fiancée. “I’m fine!”

Hearing this, Ryoga finished putting away his textbook and looked at his friend. “Wait, Ranma, are you sure? You’re all flushed and-” As if certain his eyes were deceiving him, Ryoga leaned in slightly, worry etched into the lines of his forehead. “...Are you crying?”

“W- _what?”_ Ranma asked, shocked. Blinking, he felt something warm and wet fall from the corners of his eyes and start running down the side of his nose, which he quickly wiped away with his arm. _No. No no no no no nonono this CAN’T be happening._

**_They think you’re weak._ **

“No, I’m just. It’s just.” Plausible explanation escaping him, Ranma resorted to repeating himself. “I-I’m _fine,_ okay?”

“Ranma, really,” Akane said, looking at Ranma with worry in her big brown eyes. “If something’s wrong, you should tell us.”

“I said I’m _FINE!”_ Ranma shouted. Heads began to turn at this outburst, with some students eagerly looking forward to some fresh Saotome nonsense. He felt dozens of eyes on him, but most notably two pairs of brown ones full of care.

**_Or pity._ **

Face burning, Ranma stood up from his seat, muttering “I don’t need this” as he stormed out. Ryoga started to go after him, but Akane grabbed his arm and shook her head.

“It’s probably for the best if we let him cool down.” she said. Ryoga spent a few seconds worriedly looking towards the classroom door before sitting back down.

_________________

  
  


As the duo began to eat the bentos lovingly packed by Kasumi (Akane’s had two slices of salmon arranged into a heart laying atop the rice, Ryoga noted), the fanged boy eventually became desperate to break the silence. Looking around the classroom, he eventually realized what had been bugging him. “Hey, Akane,” he asked. “Where’s your friends? I remember you saw a movie with them yesterday. I’d like to meet them!”

Akane almost choked on a pickled radish. Punching her chest and coughing (while also desperately trying to prevent Ryoga from attempting the heimlich maneuver) she managed to compose herself. Remembering how neither Yuka or Sayuri had said good morning to her or indeed talked to her at all, she dropped her head and sighed. “I… think I may have messed some things up with them yesterday.”

“Messed up? How?”

“Well, you see…” she said, still staring at her knees, “It turns out that um. That my best friends for years are lesbians? And they thought I was too?”

Ryoga’s eyes widened. “Ah.” he said, blushing slightly.

Letting out a forlorn sigh, Akane continued. “Yeah. And they said… _things_ about Kasumi. Awful things. I kind of just ran all the way home after that. But…” Ryoga heard her sniffle slightly. “But they’re my _friends._ They wouldn’t just… say things like that with no reason. I know that. It’s just… hard to talk to them after what happened, you know? Like how do you mend something like this?”

It had been a rhetorical question, and the boy next to her may as well have been a telephone pole for all the advice she was expecting, but almost immediately Akane heard the scraping of a chair against the floor and saw a large, calloused hand in front of her face.

“I think you start by talking to your friends,” Ryoga said. “Come on, let’s find them.”

Looking back up at Ryoga and his earnest, concerned face, Akane gave a wan smile. He was approaching this like he did his fight with Ranma: no hesitation, no finesse, just rushing headlong into a problem until it ceased being one. It was weirdly refreshing.

“You know what? I think you’re right.”

They found Sayuri and Yuka eating lunch together in the cafeteria. They were, of course, together, but otherwise the two of them were very decidedly alone. Seeing it from the outside for the first time, Akane was surprised she had never noticed the very clear demarcation line surrounding them. There were no students closer than five feet to the two girls, and the few who had to sit at the same table kept casting furtive glances, all the same mix of nervous and disgusted. Though Akane noticed some boys lurking at the periphery who had an unpleasant leer on their faces. Akane felt like she had swallowed a lead ball. Her friends had to deal with this _without her?_ The leering boys’ looks became somehow more lascivious at her appearance, but their eyes quickly slid to the muscular form of Ryoga standing next to her and they decided it was time to leave.

As they approached, Yuka noticed the duo and gently elbowed her girlfriend to get her attention. Sayuri looked up and paused with chopsticks en route to her mouth, a clump of beef falling back to her bowl as she saw Akane approach. Several awkward seconds passed as neither party spoke; with Akane, Yuka, and Sayuri trying to form apologies in their heads while Ryoga felt (for not the first time recently) like a third wheel with nothing to contribute. Which was extra insulting this time, seeing as there were four people here.

“I just want to say that I’m sorry.” Two voices had spoken in unison. Akane and Sayuri looked at each other and blinked in surprise.

“We should let her go first.” This time it was Yuka and Ryoga’s turn.

Akane almost couldn’t help but laugh as she sat down in front of her friends. Remembering why she was there, however, she bowed her head. “You guys don’t have to apologize.” she said. “I shouldn’t have run off yesterday. I-I guess I just sort of freaked out. I didn’t want to think about what you were saying. About Kasumi. About _me.”_

“Oh, Akane…” Sayuri began, eyes misty. Akane quickly held up a hand however.

“Please, don’t apologize. You two didn’t do anything wrong. I… I’m just kind of realizing that I kind of put my big sister on a pedestal growing up.” She sighed. “And I think you might have been kind of right? A-about liking girls. About _me_ liking girls, that is.” Akane had started to develop a blush and decided to quit talking while she was still making sentences.

Sayuri was teary-eyed, with hands clasped together in front of her mouth, clearly overjoyed. Yuka looked smug, but still happy for her friend. Ryoga mostly looked confused, but also momentarily disappointed.

“So spill, Akane.” Yuka said, leaning forward. “What finally made you admit it?”

Akane’s blush deepened. “W-well, you see…” She gulped. What she was going to admit made her feel very guilty. “I-it has to do with Ranma, actually…”

To her surprise, her friends exchanged a dark look and immediately Sayuri grabbed Akane’s hand protectively and Yuka started muttering under her breath. Ryoga, for his part, inhaled sharply through his nose and looked away, though Akane was sure she saw his ears start turning red from under his shaggy hair.

“Oh no, Akane I’m so sorry that happened to you…”

“That fuckin’ _pervert_ , I swear to god he’s no better than the rest of ‘em…”

“What?” It took Akane a few seconds to process what her friends were saying, and when she did she was horrified. “Oh, no! No, you have it all wrong! Ranma’s a perfect gentleman, I swear!” She paused for a second, considering what she just said. “Well, he’s at least a _passable_ gentleman. I’m pretty sure everything that’s happened has been an accident.”

“Well if he didn’t try to… _y’know,_ then what’s he got to do with you figuring yourself out?” Yuka asked.

“...wait, ‘happened’?” Ryoga asked, turning around with interest clearly creeping into his tone (and blush clearly emblazoned on his cheeks).

“It’s… complicated.” she said, ignoring Ryoga for the moment. “He’s been trying to keep it a secret, but that’s frankly not going to last, given how his curse works.”

A half-lidded stare from Yuka. Sweating and a nervous gulp from Ryoga ( _Hm. Should keep that in mind,_ thought Akane). It was Sayuri who finally managed, as politely as possible, to ask the big question.

“Um, Akane. What _exactly_ do you mean by ‘curse’?”

It was as if a dam broke. Over the rest of the lunch period Akane told her friends the story of the arrival some weeks ago of the panda and the fiery redhead. How Ranma was a girl who liked the same things Akane did, who wasn’t weird about fighting her, who seemed so confident, so talented, so… So _cute._ And then how it turned out “she” had picked up a curse in China, and how her normal body was that of the boy who was attending Furinkan High, and it was that body that Akane saw exiting the tub that first night. From there it was mostly isolated incidents. Akane noticing her heart racing as she guiltily snuck looks at Ranma emerging soaked from the koi pond. Melting into the strong yet feminine embrace in the tree during the fight with Ryoga.

“So, wait,” Yuka asked as they walked back to the afternoon classes. “You’re saying that girl that Kuno’s crushing on is really-”

Akane couldn’t help but grin. The irony had not been lost on her. “Yup.”

_“Hah!”_

“You guys really can’t tell anyone though, okay?” Akane said, suddenly worried. “As much as I think it won’t last, he is still keeping it a secret.”

“Don’t worry, Akane.” Sayuri reassured her. “His secret’s safe with us.” She put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “And so’s yours, of course.”

Yuka then wrapped her arm around her girlfriend’s shoulders, sandwiching Akane between them. “You can say that again!”

Doing an awkward four-legged shuffle down the hallway with Ryoga nervously bobbing behind trying not to get separated, Akane had the feeling that any semblance of her sexuality remaining a secret had about as good a chance of happening as a paper boat circumnavigating the globe.

_________________

  
  


As the quartet approached Class F, something red and agitated rushed past them while muttering about “that lousy Kuno”. As Ranma took his seat it became clear that his face (which was sporting a furious expression) had achieved the same hue as his silk shirt.

“Hey, Ranma.” Ryoga said. “Missed you at lunch.

The pigtailed boy simply grunted in response.

“What was that about Kuno?” Akane asked.

At this Ranma bolted upright and blushed harder. _“N-nothin’!”_ he said, far too emphatically. “Jerk is just his usual jerk self, that’s all.”

Having said his piece, he grabbed his textbook and shoved his face in it, apparently absorbing himself in study. This was an ineffective tactic for two reasons. One, Ranma had not been known to open his books once in the entire time he had spent at Furinkan high. Two, it was upside down.

When it was clear that her fiancé would not be entertaining any questions at this time, Akane turned to Ryoga and shrugged. “Wonder what got him so mad. He’s even worse than he was before lunch.”

_________________

  
  


Half an hour previously, Ranma had stormed out of his classroom without a destination in mind. It was only when she saw Nabiki in the hall with her friends that he remembered something he had told himself to check out on Saturday. It was weird, but given the early start and all the excitement yesterday it seemed like he had lived through an _abnormally_ long Sunday.

“Hey Nabiki, do you know where Kuno is?” he asked. “I have something I need to ask him.”

The middle Tendo sister rolled her eyes. “He’s in the classroom still. I think the school banned him from the cafeteria.”

“Banned from the- you know what? Don’t explain. What room are you in?”

“Class 2-D.” she said, pulling out a pager. “Just down the hall. Can’t miss it.” She paused while typing as she remembered the newest guest at her house. She grinned, unable to resist some light mischief. “Well, _you_ can’t miss it. Your boyfriend, on the other hand…”

Nabiki had expected some indignant sputtering. What she was _not_ prepared for was for the boy in front of her to turn an ashen color more commonly associated with mayonnaise that had begun to turn and say “ _R-Ryoga?_ But he’s not, _we’re_ not-” Getting a hold of himself and mostly returning to the angry state he’d been in when he’d initially approached her, he continued in a sufficiently indignant fashion. “He is _not_ my boyfriend. Now if you’ll excuse me.” He shoved his way through Nabiki’s two friends and stormed off.

_Well now,_ Nabiki thought. _This IS interesting._ “Oh, _Kikuko~!”_ she called out in a faux singsong voice. “Be a dear and open up Ranma’s file, would you?”

The girl with light brown hair cut close to the neck smiled. “Already on it, Nabs. Should I put down ‘probable attraction to men’?”

Nabiki beamed. “Such initiative! You’re a natural at this, babe.”

Her girlfriend and partner in crime blushed but maintained her composure. “Well, that _is_ why we’re dating.”

“Oh that’s hardly the _only_ reason.” Nabiki said, leaning in.

Ryonami rolled her eyes. She was happy for her friends, but honestly couldn’t wait for the honeymoon period to be over. This was embarrassing. “Could we get going, girls? I for one would like to have enough time to finish my lunch.”

Having sufficiently flustered Kikuko, Nabiki relented. “Of course! Let me just finish sending this message.” Turning her attention back to her pager, she finished the two word message she had started typing before getting distracted. It read, quite simply:

“GET CRACKING”

_________________

  
  


As Ranma entered the classroom, his angry head of steam managed to carry him several steps before the absolute insanity of what he was seeing properly registered. The room was devoid of students, save for Kuno himself, who was checking his pager. The reason nobody else had remained in the classroom was clear. Six desks had been moved together to form a makeshift dining table, tablecloth included. Behind the tall kendoist was a proper dining chair, plucked straight from a western-style mansion, which matched the decidedly European 3-course meal laid out in front of him. Kuno was beginning to take his seat, and Ranma saw that he was on course to miss the chair entirely. Before he could enjoy the afternoon’s entertainment, however, Ranma finally noticed the charcoal gray blur whizzing around the table, setting napkins and silverware so fast it looked like a stop motion animation. As if on cue, right as Kuno’s posterior approached the point where his center of gravity would shift beyond the point of no return, a tiny young man with a wispy moustache dressed in a ninja-yoroi pushed the chair into place below him.

“Thank you, Sasuke. That will be all.” Kuno’s ninja retainer bowed and released a smoke bomb. When the cloud disappeared, he was nowhere to be seen, an admittedly impressive feat only slightly marred by the sound of a screaming voice and the crashing of a small man into some trash cans. They were on the second floor, after all. 

“Ah, Saotome.” Kuno said, as if he hadn’t been standing there with his jaw on the floor for 30 seconds. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Shaking his head in an effort to recover from what he was currently dealing with, Ranma once again reminded himself that the emotion he was feeling right now was anger. “Listen, Kuno, I’ve got a-”

“Kuno- _senpai.”_ the third-year said. “You shall address me properly if we are to speak like gentlemen, knave.”

Ranma gritted his teeth. Ah, there was the anger. “Kuno- _senpai,”_ he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you. What’s the deal with you bettin’ against me on the fight last week? Do I need to kick yer ass again to remind you how tough I am?”

Kuno calmly took a sip of wine. _No way that’s allowed at school,_ Ranma thought. After savoring the full body and oaky flavor for an infuriating amount of time, he swallowed. “I don’t recall betting _against_ you, Saotome.” he said, placing his chin on his knuckles and looking at the other boy. “I simply bet that the fight would not reach a satisfactory end. It was a longshot, I will admit, but it did pay dividends.” Another sip, another eternity of savoring. “And a good thing it was, indeed.” He flashed Ranma a grin. “Nabiki Tendo’s services don’t come cheaply.”

Ranma thought of the agreement he and Nabiki had come to the previous day. And how a version of that had been going on without his knowledge for some time. Color draining from his face, all he could do was ask “S-services?”

“Indeed! She is a most invaluable source not only of pictures of my two beloveds (Ranma winced), but the girl acts as the locus of all information, rumor, and gossip that enters the school! Why, if there’s something you need to know, or-” Kuno became slightly less animated. “...a secret you need to keep, there’s only one person to turn to.”

“...What’re you gettin’ at, Kuno?” Ranma asked suspiciously.

He was surprised to see the upperclassman look mildly embarrassed at the question. “N-nothing, Saotome. It is of no consequence.” Clearing his throat, he grabbed his wallet and opened it. “Now. I know we got off on what one might refer to as ‘the wrong foot’.” he said somberly.

“You attacked me with a wooden stick and sicced a buncha perverts on my fiancée!” Ranma retorted indignantly.

“Ahem. Yes, well. That second bit, to be entirely fair to my own self, had been going on for some time.” Under the half-lidded stare of the younger boy he ran that sentence through his head once again. “Ah, yes. You have a point, that is indeed worse.” Rallying magnificently, Kuno continued. “Nevertheless! I feel I must apologize for my boorish behavior. It is most unbecoming of a man of my standing. Ah! Here we go.” Having found what he was looking for, he took out two slips of paper and proffered them to Ranma. “Please, take them.”

Ranma did so, confused. “What’re these?” he asked. Turning them over he saw the words “Furinkan v. Hebereke M.A.R.G.” printed on both.

“They’re tickets, of course.” Kuno replied, looking at Ranma exasperatedly. “To the upcoming Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics match between our Furinkan high and St. Hebereke’s School for Girls.”

“Martial arts?” Ranma was officially intrigued.

“Yes, have you not seen this particular form of the craft? it’s quite stunning. Fighters clash with the tools of the gymnast, movements so graceful you can nearly forget that they’re swinging 10 pound juggling clubs at each other’s heads.” Lost in his reverie, Kuno sighed. “My sister is quite the fan, and unfailingly tries out for our school’s team every semester.” His expression soured slightly and he added almost under his breath. “She’d be captain too, I’m sure of it.”

Ranma was honestly touched. He didn’t realize that Kuno had a sister, or that he cared about her so much. “Y’know, this is… really nice, Kuno-senpai. Why’d you give me two, though?”

“Why, for your plus one.” Finishing his meal, Kuno snapped his fingers and Sasuke suddenly appeared from behind him. Saluting, the ninja boy began clearing the table. “I’m already spoken for with my dear sister, but please feel free to invite whomever you please, Saotome.”

The pigtailed boy shrugged. He’d find someone to bring, he supposed. “Huh. Well, thanks, Kuno-senpai.” Ranma turned to leave, and as he reached out for the door handle the senior behind him called out.

“Oh, and by the way Saotome,” Kuno said, almost as an afterthought. “I must say you have excellent taste in sports bras. My sister swears by that brand.”

Ranma froze on the spot. Slowly, as if mounted on a lazy susan made of an 8-ton granite slab, he turned around to face Kuno, his face a grim mask.

_“What did you just say?!”_ he demanded, gripping the loose front of Kuno’s uwagi with white knuckles.

“Pray release me.” Extricating himself from the smaller boy’s grip, Kuno dusted himself off. “Pay it no heed, your secret is safe with me.”

“S-s-secret?” Ranma stammered, eyes bulging. “W-w-what secret?!”

“Why, isn’t it obvious?” The upperclassman asked, grinning. Right as Ranma was about to scream he continued, with utmost confidence, “You’re a practitioner of the most ancient and noble art of kabuki theater! Saotome, you cannot hope to hide from a man of culture such as I, Tatewaki Kuno! You are clearly an aspiring _onnagata_ in training! Method acting at all times! Such dedication! Such _passion_ for the craft! You are truly an inspiration, sir!”

It was at this point that Ranma realized that he had stopped breathing. Making sure to keep the heaving of his chest as level as possible, he composed himself as best he could. "Yes! Yes. Onnagata. Uh huh, got it in one." He made his way back to the door, desperately trying to keep his legs from shaking. "Be seein' you, Kuno."

After the door clicked shut, Tatewaki let out a breath you could barely tell he'd been holding. "Right. I do believe he bought that." _That Nabiki Tendo was going to owe him dearly,_ he ruminated. 

_________________

  
  


The school bell rang, and students began pouring out of Furinkan high. Within a sea of turquoise dresses and navy gakurans two boys stood out for their mustard yellow tunic and red Chinese-style shirt. Flanking the martial artists on either side were Hiroshi and Daisuke, with the lighter-haired boy looking lost in his own world as his friend’s attempts to get his attention failed to register.

“Yo, _Hiro!”_ the chestnut-haired boy eventually resorted to yelling.

“Huh? W-what? Sorry Dai.” Hiroshi said, finally snapping out of his mild trance and blushing.

Daisuke rolled his eyes at his space cadet of a friend. “I was asking if you wanted to check out the arcade. Hear they got a new game.”

“Oh, uh, sorry man, but I can’t.” Rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, Hiroshi explained “I kind of made plans for today.”

“Aw dude, c’mon.” He turned to Ranma. “What about you, man? You up for some co-op action?”

“Oh, I, er” the pigtailed boy began. “I’ve, uh, also got stuff I was plannin’ on doin’. Real important, sorry.”

Daisuke groaned. This new game was supposed to be both brutally difficult and played with 2 people. He needed extra hands and 100-yen coins.

“Um, I’d like to try it out, actually.”

Six eyes immediately landed on Ryoga. He had been so quiet that Hiroshi had forgotten the other boy was there, while Ranma immediately started worrying about his friend getting lost somewhere without him after spending so long searching for him. Daisuke, however, lit up immediately.

“Perfect! I knew I’d like you, Hibiki!” he said, pulling the taller boy into a sidelong hug. Ranma saw Ryoga’s eyes go wide and his body language go stiff as he began mumbling indistinctly. He felt something hot bubbling up through his stomach and into his chest, and tried to ignore it. He was _not_ jealous of Daisuke, there was nothing there to _be_ jealous of, and if there _was_ something there to be jealous of, _Ranma would win._

“Hey, Dai, yer gonna have to make sure he makes it back to the dojo in one piece, okay?” Ranma told his friend. “Dude is hopeless when it comes to directions.”

Daisuke grimaced. “What, like, walk him home? Dude, come on, people will talk.”

“I don’t care!” Ranma responded, trying to ignore that last bit. “Ryoga spent 3 years wandering around half of Asia trying to find me, I ain’t havin’ it happen again.”

The other boy relented, grumbling under his breath with snippets like “...think I’m gay or something…” being the only words that rose to the audible surface from the dark depths.

It was at this point that the 4 boys parted ways, with Hiroshi heading to his house and Daisuke and Ryoga splitting off to head to the mall. Ranma continued down the road in the direction of the Tendo dojo.

  
He realized that he’d have to put together an outfit for his... _date,_ there was no avoiding that word now, that wasn’t one of the very limited selection of shirts he owned, and sighed. Guess it was time to owe Nabiki some more favors.


	8. A Not-Date With Destiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first Furinkan student discovers the curse. Ranma has a surprisingly lovely time. Also, Shampoo!

Ranma stood nervously at the door to Nabiki’s room. After confirming that nobody else was in the house, he had taken the liberty of changing forms for the date. And now, the small matter of the outfit.

He rapped on the door with a staccato rhythm and stood there, sweating and letting his eyes unfocus. He decided to run through the final draft of what he was going to say when the door opened. It wasn’t great. _“Hello, Nabiki,”_ his brain recited dutifully. _“I need to borrow some clothes again, for some reason I’m going on a date with my friend Hiroshi.”_ God, that was awful. He really thought he could just go in and ask _the gossip queen of Furinkan_ for cute clothes to impress a boy! Ranma was panicked beyond the point where he could bother attempting to deny that he wanted either of those things, to himself at least. But he still had a life outside of his own head, and if Ranma really knew what was good for him he’d keep all this shit locked up there, until one day, he _died._

After the fourth or fifth worst-case scenario of his deviancy becoming known flashed rapid-pace across his brain (Kuno had strapped him to a boulder and pushed him into a volcano in this one) it registered to even Ranma’s dazed mind that it was taking Nabiki a _long_ time to answer the knock. Was she taking a nap? Unlikely, he decided. The business-minded girl was inclined to late mornings and even later nights. She thought best past 10 PM, she insisted. Just as Ranma began entertaining thoughts of turning around and rifling through Akane’s closet, the door opened a crack. Nabiki, her face strangely flushed and normal neat bob in disarray, glared out angrily.

“What the _hell_ do you want this ti-” she paused, glare disappearing as she registered who was at the door. “Oh, R-Ranm- er, Ran-chan! What a surprise!” As she opened the door wider, Ranma saw that a tag was sticking out of the front of her shirt. On her bed was the friend who Ranma only knew as Not Ryonami, who appeared to be in a similar state of flustered disarray.

“Uh, hi.” Feeling like he had somehow interrupted something important, Ranma scratched his head awkwardly. “Sorry if I’m interrupting somethin’ but I kinda have an important favor to ask.”

Kikuko opened her mouth to tell the redhead to leave, but Nabiki held up her hand. “What is it?”

“Well, y’see, I kind of need an outfit for a date…”

Nabiki smiled. “While I’m sure Akane would appreciate the effort, I’m sure she’d prefer you wear your own clothes than bum some of mine.”

Ranma froze and refused to meet her gaze. “...It ain’t Akane.” he said eventually.

“What?” Nabiki found herself uncharacteristically blindsided. It was highly unnerving.

“It ain’t with Akane.” Ranma repeated. “It’s…” He took a deep, slow breath and closed his eyes, bracing for impact. “I-it’s with Hiroshi.”

Nabiki’s face was utterly impassive. “I see.” she said. “In that case, I’ll see what I can do.”

As she led the currently short redhead to her closet, Kikuko managed to re-assert herself. “Uh, excuse me for butting in, but we _were_ in the middle of something that I was _kind of_ enjoying.” Nabiki whipped her head around to glare at her girlfriend and made a frantic shushing motion. Smirking, Kikuko continued. “I mean, far be it from me to imply that she doesn’t need fashion advice. I mean,” she gestured at Ranma’s current outfit. “She’s dressed just like that Ranma kid.”

If it had just been Nabiki in the room, the work of inspector Kikuko would have ended there as she lay back to pout. Unfortunately, Ranma’s poker face wasn’t too great at the best of times, and currently his nerves were stretched tight enough that you could use him to tune a piano. From halfway inside the closet there was a yelp and a clatter of dropped clothes hangers, and Kikuko mentally replayed what she had just said.

“You’re dressed… _exactly_ like that Ranma kid…” Wheels began to turn under the light brown hair on the girl’s head. Not the well-oiled, slick and silent cogs and flywheels of industry, but great granite discs, the granddaddies of all potter’s wheels. As they spun up, their mass created an inertia of thought that, once she had gotten past the effort of entertaining it, refused to stop for anything, though the reasoning naturally tended towards the circular. “... _EXACTLY_ like Ranma. Except the clothes are too big. Like they’re sized for a boy. A boy named Ranma. A boy named Ranma who to _my_ knowledge, which is to say _Nabiki’s dossier, DOES NOT HAVE A SISTER.”_

Kikuko glared at Nabiki, who in a rare turn of events was sweating bullets and looked like she definitely didn’t have an answer. _“EXACTLY LIKE RANMA!”_ she said, pointing helpfully at the redhead in front of her.

Nabiki turned to the pint-sized martial artist next to her and shrugged. “Sorry, Ranma.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s fine, really, it’s…” Another sigh. “It’s _fine._ It’s not like I could actually get any more stressed if I tried, anyway.”

_“Is anybody going to tell me what the FUCK is going on?!”_ Kikuko shouted, still reeling from the recent revelation and seeing no explanations in sight.

“Right, yeah.” the Tendo girl said, slapping her forehead. “This all probably seems crazy to you. You see, Ranma and his father arrived here after a long training journey in China…”

And so it was that the story of Ranma’s curse was recounted, primarily by Nabiki, but with Ranma cutting in with minor corrections or additional context when needed. Kikuko, for her part, simply sat on the bed with a blank expression. Occasionally asking questions to which Ranma gave what were in her opinion frustratingly short answers. How many pools were there? “Hundreds. Thousands, maybe.” Is there a spring that could turn you back? “Hopefully.” Were all the springs places where a person had drowned? “No.” No? “There’s more animal ones than people.” And you know this how? “Pops turns into a panda.” What. “Pops fell into the spring of drowned panda.” _What._ “Pops fell into the-”

“Yeah, yeah. I heard you the first time.” Kikuko felt she was finally getting a grip on things, but this was a weird new wrinkle to add to the mix. “I’m just… I thought you had a _really weird_ pet, is all. You’re telling me,” she thought about the man she knew as “Nabiki’s dad’s friend” for a moment. “That the fat, lazy guy wearing a white gi with a black belt…” her brow furrowed as she completed her mental picture. “...and _circular glasses_ around his eyes turns into a _panda?”_

Nabiki and Ranma glanced at each other, and then back at Kikuko. “...Y-yeah?” Ranma hazarded.

The girl on the bed was silent for a while, staring at the pair by the closet. “...Huh. Fitting, I guess.”

Content now that she had solved the Great Mystery and answered the Important Questions, Kikuko relaxed. However, silencing the big alarm in her brain resulted only in the myriad of smaller alarms suddenly becoming audible.

“Boy.” she said, once again startling the redhead in the closet, who had been looking with interest at an orange top with wedges cut out to expose the shoulders. “You’re a boy.”

“Y-yes?” Ranma said, confused. “I thought we just covered that. Springs. Curse. _This.”_ With the last word he simply gestured at his currently curvaceous form.

“Hiroshi. Also boy.” She pulled out the manilla envelope labeled “Saotome, Ranma” from earlier that day and opened it to the most recent page. She then proceeded to pull a pen out from her pocket and crossed out the word “probable” and wrote in “definite”. The data on Ranma’s sexuality sufficiently up-to-date, Kikuko collapsed on the bed and sighed. _“Did it.”_

Nabiki smiled, as proud as ever of Kikuko’s dedication. “Come on, Ranma. You don’t want to be late, do you? Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Ranma stepped in front of the mirror attached to the closet door. He had opted for the orange shirt, alongside a pair of skinny jeans (ankles cuffed to account for the nearly five inch difference in height, naturally). The feeling of wearing a thick fabric like denim was already alien to him, and the fact that it hugged his legs so tightly only added to the weirdness. He found himself vaguely patting at his thighs as he looked at his reflection. “Wow, I look…” The corners of his mouth curled up in a small grin, a rare occurrence when looking at his own reflection. “... _Good.”_

“Of course you do.” Nabiki said, snapping Ranma out of his momentary daze. “You are, not to put too fine a point on it, a bombshell, and I have _incredible_ taste.” she said matter-of-factly. “Now if you think we have time, I guess I could help you-”

Her thought was interrupted by a pair of toned arms wrapping around her neck and her vision being obscured by red hair as Ranma stood on tiptoes to hug her. “Thanks, Nabs.” As he pulled away, his attention drifted downward and his brow furrowed. “Hey, do you have somethin’ on yer neck-?”

Nabiki’s smile betrayed nothing, but she slapped a hand to her neck fast enough that even Ranma’s eyes had difficulty following the movement. “Bug bite.” she said, leading the martial artist to the hallway. “It’s almost June. Mosquito season.”

Ranma was about to thank Nabiki again, but a combination of comments over the past few days and the state he had found her and Kikuko in when he first knocked suddenly clicked some part of his brain into place. Turning around, he managed to say “Hey wait, Nabiki do you like g-” before the door slammed in his face.

Ranma blushed as he went downstairs to his room. He had managed to kill some romance before even _leaving_ for his date. Had to be a record. He grabbed his school bag and opened up the zippered compartment. Standing in front of the small vanity mirror set up on the room’s lone desk, he inspected this form’s makeup. He had spent enough time cursed to begin to understand how the switching aspect worked. When he had first emerged from Nyannīchuan he had somehow wound up wearing purple eyeliner. Changing back removed it when he returned to his male body, and being splashed with cold water would see it reappear. At first he assumed it was permanent, inherent to the curse, but spending time in his cursed body saw any makeup wear off like it would on anyone else (and given the nature of his curse, even nominally waterproof brands had a short life expectancy).

After a quick touchup he looked at his reflection. Then back at the small pile of cosmetics on the desk. It was just a date with Hiroshi, it was going to be casual. He picked up a metal tube. They were going to be eating, as well. He opened it, revealing an utterly pristine stick of dark red lipstick, having clearly never been used. Don’t be _stupid,_ Ranma.

_________________

  
  


Standing outside the Nekohanten and wearing a light plaid button-down shirt with his nicest pair of jeans, Hiroshi bounced nervously on the balls of his feet. It was lucky that the place lived up to its name, because without the adorable purple cat purring away in his arms he was certain he’d be screaming right now. He checked his watch for the 3rd time that minute, and it had finally changed from 3:54 to 3:55. It was fine, it was okay, she wasn’t late. She still had five minutes. Five minutes to find the place that he never actually told her brother how to get to oh god Hiroshi you idiot how could you forget that now she hated you and you _deserved it you great big dumb bastard-_

“Hey! Hiroshi!” He was jolted out of his panic by a female voice behind him. “It’s me, Ranko!”

“R-Ranko! You made it!” Hiroshi turned around to face the girl, relieved. “Wow, that lipstick looks great! It uh,” he blushed and rubbed the back of his head. “It really suits you. I was worried for a sec because I realized I forgot to give Ranma directions, but I guess it was okay, huh?” As he looked at his date, however, he noticed that she had frozen mid-wave, a look of abject horror slowly making its way across her features. “Hey, i-is something wrong?”

Ranma pointed a shaky finger at the feline menace in Hiroshi’s hands, chest heaving alarmingly. He had flashbacks to his youth, the early years of his training journey. To a massive pit, the awful stench of pureed fish from sausage links wrapped around his tiny form. To a hungry yowling coming from below as he begged his father not to lower him down any further. To claws. Lots of claws.

“C-C-C-CAT! _CAT!! T-THAT’S A REAL CAT!!!”_

“Ranko, are you…” Hiroshi looked at the kitten in his arms (which if he didn’t know any better, he’d say was glaring at Ranko) and then back at the red-haired girl quivering in terror. “...afraid of cats?”

“N-n-n-no! I ain’t scared of nothin’-” A hiss from the cat, now trying to wiggle out of Hiroshi’s arms and claw at Ranma. _“Kyaaaaaaaa!!!”_ Ranma screamed, falling to the ground and scooting backwards, desperate to put as much space as possible between himself and the furred menace.

“H-hey, it’s okay, see?” Hiroshi opened the door to the restaurant and let the cat back inside, shooing it gently. “Cat’s gone, nothing to worry about!”

Slowly, the small girl’s breathing evened out, and she gratefully accepted the hand of the boy smiling down at her. Ranma was more than capable of getting up himself, but it was a nice gesture. No need to be rude. “Th-thank you.”

“O-oh! Of course!” Hiroshi was acutely aware that his palms were sweating as he pulled Ranko up, and as soon as she was vertical he wiped his hand on his shirt while grinning apologetically. “Sorry about all this. I-I really should have looked into it, or… I don’t know, something!”

“H-hey, man- er, Hiroshi. It’s okay.” Ranma smiled. “It was a bit early for dinner, anyway. And for some reason _one of us_ decided it would be a great idea to wear lipstick.”

Hiroshi laughed, and then turned to look at Ranma, smiling. “Oh man, hope it wasn’t me. My mom would kill me if she found out.”

They both started laughing even harder as they walked away from the Nekohanten. Ranma was relieved, this date with Hiroshi was turning out like any old hangout session. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

“So, uh, where are we headin’?” he asked. “Seein’ as how eating’s off the menu.”

“Oh, I actually was thinking of heading to this really cool place I go to for gunpla and stuff! I uh…” he scratched his head, embarrassed. “I know it’s probably not your _first_ idea for a date location, but I think it’d be fun.”

“Sounds good to me!” The redhead beamed. “Just lead the way.”

“R-really? You want to go?”

“Sure! I dunno what a ‘gunpla’ is but it sure seems like yer excited. Maybe it’s contagious.” He grinned at Hiroshi.

The other boy laughed. “Oh man, I hope you’re ready for a _lot_ of explanation on the way.”

_________________

  
  


Inside the restaurant, customers felt a small furry animal dash underfoot as the occasional mascot ran into the back, a fuzzy lavender blur. Their attention returned to their meals, confident that the owner and cook would continue to ensure that their food remained fur-free.

Said cook was the oldest woman any of the patrons had ever seen, so hunched with age that she seemed to be collapsing in on herself like a star at the end of its life. Her white hair dragged on the floor (not exactly a hard task, given her height) and she was dressed in a green silk robe that was long enough on her to cover her feet and hands completely. The way she bounded around the kitchen, juggling tasks (metaphorically) and cutting implements (literally) made it clear that age had not slowed her in the slightest.

She watched the cat bound around the corner, to where a large pot was simmering, full of the rich pork broth that would be used for the soups that day. A pair of tired eyes watched as the agitated creature jumped straight in, and a hoarse sigh escaped her lips. “Really, great-granddaughter, that was _supposed_ to be served to customers.”

The pot, which had toppled over after the cat jumped in, now did not contain a small, wet feline. Instead, in the middle of a salty puddle on the floor kneeled a very pretty, very angry, and very _naked_ girl. Her hair was a strange indigo hue, and it cascaded down her body, easily long enough to reach her bottom were she standing. Unfortunately, said bottom was currently stuck in the pot she had jumped into in her cat form, and as she struggled to dislodge herself the various pots and pans that had been knocked off the shelf slowly came to rest, with a single plate spinning for several seconds longer than anything else (in proper accordance with the universal laws of comedy).

“<Great-grandmother!>” she snarled in Mandarin, though the impact of her fury was lessened somewhat by her current resemblance to a particularly nubile tortoise. “<It’s _her!_ The outsider girl! She just left, I have to catch up to her!>”

“Child!” the old woman shouted, apparently unperturbed by the scene in front of her. “What did I tell you about needing to practice your Japanese?”

Finally extricating herself from the kitchenware, the purple-haired girl sighed. She _hated_ how her words got mangled when she tried to speak the local language. “Fine, great-grandmother Cologne. You right.” Standing up, she leaned down over the tiny figure of her elder and balled her fists in righteous fury. “But it her! The red hair girl, Ranma! She is here, in Tokyo! Shampoo have to kill her, get revenge!”

The old woman known as Cologne sighed. Shampoo was a strong warrior, easily the strongest of the young Joketsuzoku, but impulsive. Case in point, she was already grabbing her chuÍ with the intent on bashing this Ranma girl’s skull in. “What you _have_ to do, my child, is get cleaned up and put some clothes on.” She let out a chuckle that was more like a series of croaks. “Besides, she already beat you once before. I don’t expect it will end any differently this time.”

“Shampoo train since then! Better fighter than before!” the girl said indignantly, while she finished putting on a light pink blouse and reached for a pair of magenta pants on the hook by the rear entrance. “She beat that Ranma girl!”

“Better you may be, great-granddaughter, but I daresay that if she’s well off enough to be going to restaurants then she probably isn’t half-starved like she was for your first fight.” Bonking her young relative on the head with a staff designed for someone of more normal proportions, she continued her lecture. “Besides, we just got here. If I’m going to travel all the way to Tokyo I’m going to spend some time enjoying myself.” She gave her great-granddaughter a smile. “You’re going to need to do _some_ spying if you want to figure out this girl’s weaknesses, anyway.”

“Oh! But that where we are in luck, great-grandmother!” Shampoo, now fully dressed, grinned. “Shampoo learn Ranma girl afraid of cats! Cannot stand them!”

Cologne was quiet for a while, staring at Shampoo, as a similar grin formed on her wrinkled features. After a period of hearty laughter that sounded like someone wrestling with a hand-cranked pencil sharpener, she handed her great-granddaughter a mop. “While this is excellent news child, I do still believe that you have more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, cleaning up the kitchen.” She hopped on top of her staff and chuckled as she bounced away. “Get to it! I’m not paying you to stand around!”

“< _You’re not paying me to work here at ALL. >” _ Shampoo muttered under her breath as she cleaned the mess on the floor. _Still,_ she thought. _Great-grandmother has a point. I should see what else I can learn about this girl. Where she lives, for one thing._

_________________

  
  


It was a bit of a walk to the store Hiroshi wanted to take Ranma to. But there was at least a half-decent documentary playing if you needed some white noise. In the space of half an hour Ranma found himself armpit deep in the entirely fictional history of something called the Universal Century, with meaningless terms like Zeon, Side Three, and (he had to have misheard this one) “Quattro Bajeena”. There was real life stuff in there too, like the distinction between what Hiroshi called “super robot” anime and “mecha”. It was all Greek to Ranma, who had not grown up with reliable access to television. Amazingly, he didn’t mind. It was nice seeing Hiroshi so animated about something, he wasn’t exactly the most talkative guy at school.

“...So last year they started Gundam ZZ, which is a direct follow-up to-” Hiroshi paused, glancing back at his date and realizing after seeing her blank expression that he’d just spoken uninterrupted for around 28 minutes straight. “O-oh my god, I’m so sorry.” he said, blushing. “I should have known I’d be boring you…”

“Wuh?” Ranma snapped out of his half-trance and focused his eyes on the boy in front of him. “Oh, n-no, it’s cool. It’s…” He blushed to match his friend. “I-it’s nice hearing you talk. You’re usually so quiet.”

Hiroshi cocked his head to the side. “Usually? This is the first time we’ve talked at all, Ranko.”

_Shit._ “Uh, r-right! It’s just that my brother talks about you and his other friend a lot.”

“Really?” Hiroshi looked down and smiled. It was difficult to tell from behind, but Ranma could swear that his friend’s blush deepened by a shade or two. “T-that’s very nice of him.” Looking up, his face lit up. “Ah! Here we are!”

Ranma looked at the building in front of him. If it hadn’t been pointed out he probably wouldn’t have even registered that it was there. The storefront was tiny, with barely the width of the door on either side of the entrance, and the large windows, instead of showing off an enticingly laid-out interior, were all but blocked by tens or hundreds of cardboard boxes. If it weren’t for the small “OPEN” sign taped to one of the windows at about eye level, he’d have assumed the building was abandoned.

Hiroshi opened the door, and a small ring of the bell affixed to the door frame announced their entrance. At the sound, a large, bearded man behind the counter turned around and gave a wide smile when he saw the high schooler walking up to the counter. “Hiroshi! Great to see you again, it’s been a while.”

“It’s been 2 days, Keiji.” he said, chuckling.

“May as well have been forever, kid!” the man named Keiji replied. Apparently noticing Ranma for the first time, he nudged his favorite customer. “Oh- _ho,_ so you’ve brought a _lady friend_ today!” As Hiroshi sputtered with embarrassment Keiji turned his attention to Ranma. “What’s your name and how’d this nerd trick you into following him anywhere?”

“Oh, er, it’s Ranko,” Ranma said. “And this nerd just happened to ask me on a date.” Pausing for a second, Ranma reconsidered that sentence. “Or, at least, he asked my brother to ask me on a date for him. Anyways, I said yes.”

The proprietor side-eyed Hiroshi. “Really know how to treat a girl, huh kid?”

“H-hey! We were supposed to go to a restaurant, but there was, uh,” Hiroshi glanced at Ranma, who looked embarrassed even remembering his reaction to the cat. “...a problem. So, I figured, why not take her to my favorite place to hang out?”

Keiji winced. “You mean ‘favorite place to _shop’,_ right?”

Hiroshi laughed. “Yeah, yeah.” Turning to the redhead, he smiled. “So, you want to take a look around?”

Ranma glanced around the shop. If he was being honest, he felt like he had done all the looking it was possible to do. The place was so tiny and so full of piles of boxes and racks of VHS tapes that it was claustrophobic even in his current petite form. Still, he figured he should at least be polite and say yes. He turned back to look at his friend and found himself staring into a pair of hazel eyes and an eager grin.

Ranma smiled back. “Uh, y-yeah! I’d love to, Hiro.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I *know* Shampoo didn't get her curse until later in canon. I don't care this was more fun.


	9. It's Only Logical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God Daisuke is just the straightest boy in the world in this one

Daisuke’s afternoon was not going quite as well as Hiroshi’s.

First, there was the trip to the arcade itself. It was one of the most visited spots by kids looking to extend the amount of time between class and homework as much as possible. Going with the flow and following the current of bodies from Furinkan High would lead you there in 7 minutes, tops. It had taken them 50, and even then only because Daisuke had finally relented and grabbed a hold of Ryoga’s arm to drag him there.

Second, once there and prepped to dump the remainder of his money in the form of 100-yen coins into the shiny new Contra machine in front of him, he found his co-op partner quickly losing interest (and losing a life immediately by attempting to run left at the start). Out of money, Daisuke was resorting to watching other students play while idly testing coin returns. Ryoga had wandered into the corner with the older machines and was busy getting hopelessly lost within the catacombs of Ms. Pac-Man, surrounded by a throng of girls.

Daisuke’s eyebrows furrowed under his chestnut bangs, and he glared at the other boy with jealousy. That Hibiki guy had been at Furinkan for one day and already had half the female students lining up to…

...To cheer him on at a six-year-old arcade game, apparently.

Daisuke sighed. Here he was, watching a boy with shiny black hair, big brown eyes, and arms that looked like he was smuggling cantaloupes  _ completely ignore  _ an amount of attention from the fairer sex that would have convinced Daisuke that he had either (a) died and somehow made it to heaven or (b) was having another one of those dreams that he always woke up from before they got to the good part.

Eventually, though, even Ryoga’s pockets ran dry despite the older game’s lower cost, and he made his way back over to his erstwhile player two, waving at the crowd of girls as he left.

“Thank you all for the help! I had a great time!”

“Aw, do you have to leave so soon?” asked a short girl with long brown hair. “It’s so fun to watch you play!”

“Yeah, sorry.” he said. “Don’t want Ranma or the Tendos to worry.”

A chorus of disappointed “Awwwwwww”s erupted from the assembled young women as the two boys left the arcade. Daisuke started heading towards the Tendo dojo and turned to the black-haired boy walking next to him to find an empty patch of air instead of a martial artist. Whipping his head around, he saw Ryoga heading the wrong way down the street and ran to catch him before he rounded a corner. Reluctantly grabbing a hold of him once again, Daisuke began leading the eternally lost boy home.

“C’mon, let’s go through the area where they set up the food carts.” Daisuke said. “I’m starving.”

Ryoga’s stomach grumbled in agreement. “...You have money?”

“No.” Daisuke sighed. “Still, it’s on the way and we can at least try to bum some free samples off of people.”

The muscular boy he was towing along chuckled, though there was a subtle rueful edge to it. “I don’t think either of us are cute enough to make that work.”

Daisuke stopped short so quickly that Ryoga bumped into him. He couldn’t help it, the troubling thoughts were finally reaching a point where he had to ask. “Dude, I need you to tell me something. Are you gay?” Ryoga started blushing and stuttering incoherently almost immediately, and more worryingly he had wrenched his arm free and was backing up. Daisuke knew he had to act fast before the other boy dashed off and wound up in Antarctica or something. “Listen, I ain’t gonna judge if you are,” he lied. “I just need to know for my sake.”

Mollified but still flustered, Ryoga rubbed the back of his head. “N-no, I like girls.” he said. “Plenty of girls. I just-” he sighed and looked down. “I just feel like it’s not my place, y’know? Like I’m intruding on something just by being there. Girls are so pretty, and wonderful, and what on Earth would they want with, with…” The large boy gestured frustratedly at his Charles Atlas-like physique. “...with all _ this!”  _ he eventually managed to spit out in disgust.

The two walked in silence for a while, with Daisuke running Ryoga’s outburst through his mind on loop. He was about to tell Ryoga what had been bothering him when the other boy sighed again. “So… yeah.” he said. “I do like guys too, so I guess you were half right.” He gave a melancholic smile. “Lucky me, huh? I can handle the idea of being a  _ boy’s  _ boyfriend. It’s… easier.”

Another silence followed. Daisuke wasn’t often the type of guy who dealt with this kind of emotional stuff, which could be chalked up to an acute case of being a teenage boy. He was also nervous. This was, as far as he knew (and of  _ course  _ he knew) the first guy who liked other guys he’d ever met. Klaxons were blaring in his brain, and he could feel his already tense body language doing its damndest to distance itself even further from Ryoga.  _ I mean,  _ he thought,  _ who KNOWS what he’d do?  _ But… that wasn’t fair, was it? It’s not like he had  _ done  _ anything. Daisuke wasn’t the best student, but he was passing sex ed with a 72%, and from what he could remember he was  _ pretty sure  _ you couldn’t catch gay. Definitely at least 72% sure.

And so it was that, against his instincts, Daisuke found himself putting what he hoped came off as a comforting hand on the other boy’s shoulder and gave him what he was desperately trying to not make a rictus grin of terror. “Listen, man, I understand.” Realizing what he had just said, he paled slightly and did a verbal backpedal. “Er, uh, that is, I don’t understand liking dudes.” he sputtered, quickly removing a hand that was suddenly so slick with sweat that it left a damp print on Ryoga’s shirt. Wiping his palm off on his own gakuran, he continued. “But I understand being nervous around girls.”

Ryoga tilted his head and frowned. “It’s not that I’m nervous around girls. The opposite, really.” He sighed once again. “I’m more comfortable around girls than boys, almost. But as friends, you know what I mean?”

Daisuke, who considered himself God’s gift to women (which if the women of Furinkan High knew he thought that, they’d demand a gift receipt), did  _ not  _ know what Ryoga meant. “I’m afraid I don’t, man.” he said. A thought struck him and he chuckled. This was just the joke Ryoga needed to take his mind off things. “Dude, it almost sounds like you want to  _ be  _ a girl.” Chuckling giving way to laughter, he did what all people who are very sure they’re funny did and checked to make sure the joke landed.

It hadn’t.

Ryoga’s face had drained of color, his eyes staring at nothing. His limbs had stiffened noticeably, and Daisuke suddenly had the sensation that he was dragging an old tin robot toy behind him instead of another human being. “D-do you  _ not  _ want to…” Daisuke strained to hear what he was saying over the ambient noise of the city. “...To be a…”

“Dude, you okay?” Daisuke asked, genuine concern entering his voice. “Let’s just change the subject okay?” Ryoga nodded, coming back to reality slightly. Searching for a suitable topic, a smug grin found its home on the brown-haired boy’s face. “Alright, I got something. You like dudes?” Ryoga nodded again, though somewhat uncertain as to where the conversation was headed. “Alright then,” Daisuke said. “Am I hot?”

He was simultaneously relieved and… not thrilled by the reaction this elicited. Ryoga immediately stifled a laugh, turning his head and putting a hand in front of his mouth to avoid spraying his new friend with the spittle that escaped. “Hey!” Daisuke exclaimed indignantly, color rising in his cheeks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Sorry, man. You’re just not my type I guess.”

_ “Not your type?!” _

“Oh not at  _ all.  _ You’re kind of a twig, dude.”

Sputtering, Daisuke angrily fumed for a few seconds, completely forgetting that his original goal was to get Ryoga to forget about his problems for a while, and that he had succeeded wildly. Ryoga, for his part, was very amused by Daisuke’s very obviously damaged pride.

“Alright then, who  _ is  _ your type?” Daisuke demanded, still slightly red in the face.

Ryoga’s heart skipped a beat. Was it okay to tell him? He was  _ his  _ friend too, would this make things even more weird? He’d just try to make up a hypothetical guy. “O-oh, I um,” he began, sweating slightly. “The type of guy I like is more like um, like uh-” suddenly, a pair of teenagers walking through the food carts caught his attention. One looked flustered, scratching at the light brown hair on the back of his head and trying to keep up with his date. The other, walking quickly ahead to the next stall and popping a takoyaki into her mouth, was a redheaded girl holding a cardboard box awkwardly under one arm, who was looking positively radiant in a pair of skinny jeans and an orange top.  _ “...RANMA?!”  _ Ryoga finished, forgetting how the sentence had started.

Daisuke rolled his eyes. He should have figured. “Well good luck dude, but I don’t think Ranma swings that way. Guy’s the manliest man I know.” Noticing that Ryoga was in fact looking  _ past  _ him, he followed his gaze. “...Wait, is that Hiroshi?” He squinted and shaded his eyes from the late afternoon sun. “...and is he… no. No he is  _ not  _ on a  _ date  _ with the girl who  _ LOST ME MY BET!”  _ Daisuke fumed. “So  _ this  _ is what his ‘plans’ were? I can’t  _ believe  _ him! Come on,” he said, not bothering to grab Ryoga’s arm this time. “Let’s get you home, I can deal with him tomorrow.”

Ryoga was stunned, having received the best news of his life in the worst possible way. He soon snapped out of it when he no longer felt Daisuke’s presence next to him, though fortunately the street was very sparsely populated by people looking for food at this hour and his grumbling shepard was still visible. Hurrying over, he wondered how he’d broach the subject with Ranma later that night.

_________________

  
  


Ranma was greedily shoveling takoyaki into his mouth while Hiroshi politely declined his offers to share, somewhat embarrassed at how they were acquired.

“I’m tellin’ you Hiro,” he said after downing the last one, dropping the tray into a trash can as they passed. “Food tastes better when it’s free!”

“And I’m telling  _ you,  _ Ranko, I would have gladly paid!” Hiroshi said, slightly frustrated. “It’s the same thing from your point of view, and you wouldn’t have needed to debase yourself like that!”

This gave Ranma some pause, mostly because he didn’t know what the word “debase” meant.  _ “Sounds  _ like yer tellin’ me I shouldn’t do this.” he said through a mouthful of fried octopus. After chewing and swallowing it, he continued. “But here’s the thing. I  _ love  _ doin’ this! I just bat my eyelashes,” the redhead gave Hiroshi his best puppy dog eyes, causing his date to blush slightly. “...and clench my fists like I’m real excited,” fists below the chin, elbows out, and hips swaying quickly back and forth led to Hiroshi beginning to sweat as his blush deepened. “...and I give them my cutest voice, and they just  _ give  _ me it! It makes me feel great! Like…” Ranma faltered slightly. “...y’know, like I’m attractive.” He brightened back up quickly. “I mean, I’m sure you get it.”

Hiroshi, who had been busy feeling like he was swallowing sand as he tried to will his saliva glands back into operation, finally found his voice. “N-not exactly? I mean I’m glad for you, but,” he gave a nervous titter. “Acting like a girl isn’t exactly on my list of priorities.”

Ranma simply stared at his date, confused. As he stared back, equally if politely confused, Ranma’s own confusion morphed into embarrassment. Looking to change the subject, he held up the box emblazoned with an imposing, monocular robot in a variety of poses. “Um, anyway, I didn’t want you spendin’ any more of yer money on me, not after getting me this!”

Hiroshi laughed. “Oh, that’s nothing! Those basic kits are only like 800 yen. I’m glad you like it, though!”

Seeing his friend so happy that he liked his gift caused unfamiliar butterflies to flutter through Ranma’s stomach, and he found himself blushing. “Y-yeah, well. I ain’t exactly the most familiar with Gundam, but it’s just real nice, is all.”

“Well consider this Zaku an introduction, Ranko.” Hiroshi said with a warm smile.

This time it was Ranma’s turn to swallow nervously. He hoped that his face wasn’t as red as it felt.  _ This has GOT to be the curse.  _ He thought as his heart began to race.  _ Nobody’s made me feel like this since, well. _

_ Since middle school. _

The duo arrived at a house that Hiroshi identified as his own. “Um, I’d be able to walk you home if you wanted…” he said, clearly nervous.

“O-oh! Uh,” Ranma didn’t know who’d be home at this hour and didn’t want to risk it, as tempting as extending his date another few minutes was. “I actually had something I needed to do before I got back, I wouldn’t want you staying out too late.” He looked up at the currently much taller boy’s face and felt his face get warm again. “T-thank you though.”

“Ah! I guess this is goodbye, then?” And it was in that second that Ranma swore that time stopped. Rustling of the leaves in the trees grew distant, the entire universe became the boy in front of him. The boy who Ranma saw in school every day. The boy who was currently closing his eyes and leaning down. Before the redhead could object, Hiroshi’s face made a slight adjustment to its trajectory and planted a kiss on Ranma’s left cheek. There was no doubt about it now, Ranma’s face was burning with the heat of the blood rushing to it. “I had a lovely time, Ranko.” Hiroshi said, with that same smile he’d been wearing for half the date.

“Ghlk” Ranma said.

“So I guess I’ll see you later?”

“Hrdk”

“Maybe come to the dojo on Sunday?”

“Nngh”

Hiroshi had made his way to the door and was standing in the genkan to his house. “I’ll take that as a yes, Ranko. Goodnight.”

Ranma simply stood there as the sounds of the city around him came flooding back. Taking deep breaths, he leapt up on top of the house across the street and began making his way back towards the Tendo dojo. He really had to think about anything else right now.

Unbeknownst to him, Hiroshi had been watching from the window to his room as his date suddenly jumped on top of the neighbor’s roof and raced across the Nerima skyline. He grinned as he watched Ranma go.

_________________

  
  


“<Reconnaissance, day one:>” The indigo-haired girl hit stop on the tape recorder in her hand, pausing briefly and wondering if she should use this as an opportunity to practice her Japanese skills.  _ Screw it,  _ Shampoo thought.  _ Accuracy is more important than self-improvement. Besides, do I really think great-grandmother is going to LISTEN to these? They’re for my own sake.  _ Clicking the record button once again, she continued. “<In a remarkably fortunate turn of events, I have a lead already. The trail on the Ranma girl had gone cold by the time I was allowed to leave the Nekohanten, but amazingly I chanced upon the panda she travelled with when she came to Joketsuzoku.>”

She hit stop again. Admittedly, this could potentially be  _ any  _ panda. However, the distinct lack of the animal in Tokyo led her to believe it was connected to her quarry, while the intelligence it demonstrated in sweeping the sidewalk and holding sign-based conversations with the resident doctor at the clinic suggested a Jusenkyo curse. Record was hit again.

“<I believe that if I can find where this panda is staying, I can find Ranma.>” Content with her note-taking, she pressed stop one last time and placed the tape recorder in her bag, fixing both her hands on her binoculars once again. Suddenly, she noticed movement on the periphery of the binocular’s range of vision. Lowering the zoom to get a wider angle, she saw a small figure bouncing from rooftop to rooftop, zooming back in revealed a shock red hair tied in a ponytail and blowing in the wind.

Shampoo could not  _ believe  _ her luck.

_________________

  
  


Alighting on the roof of Dr. Tofu’s, Ranma moved to the shadow of the air conditioning unit, as out of view of the street as possible. It wasn’t that he had  _ lied  _ to Hiroshi, he did have something he needed to get done before he returned home. Fetching the bag he had left there on his way to the Nekohanten (it had been Nabiki’s idea, though Ranma cursed himself for not even considering it) he quickly changed into his usual outfit, keeping a sharp eye out for any possible prying eyes. Despite the heat of the late may afternoon, he shivered slightly as he removed his bra and shoved it in the bag with Nabiki’s borrowed clothes. He supposed he was just getting used to the idea of something being there in this form. Clad once again in his usual red silk shirt and loose black pants, Ranma hopped down to street level, wincing at a pain he hadn’t felt in several days as his breasts, now unrestrained, bounced when he landed.

“Gwooaarr?” came a deep animal sound from behind him.

Ranma jumped in shock, turning around to see Genma in his panda form holding a broom and looking equally surprised to see his son suddenly appear in front of him. The broom shoved under his arm (leg? Ranma wasn’t sure what to call his transformed father’s upper appendages), the ursine Saotome patriarch scribbled on the signboard he had taken to carrying around.  _ <What happened to you, boy?>,  _ he asked.

“What’s it look like, ya dumb panda? Got splashed. Came here to grab some hot water before going home, since Kasumi’s probably makin’ dinner right now.”

Genma nodded. As he stepped aside to let his transformed son into the clinic, Ranma stopped, having just realized something.

“Hey pops, what are  _ you  _ doing here? And sweepin’ the sidewalk?” Ranma chuckled to himself. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost guess you found a  _ job  _ here or somethin’-”

As if on cue, Dr. Tofu chose that moment to poke his head out of the door. “Mr. Saotome, your shift is done!” he said in his pleasant voice. Turning to the new arrival, the sun glinted off his round glasses for a second as he adjusted them in surprise. “Oh! And if it isn’t Ranma. What can I do for you?”

“Well doc, I was kind of wondering if you could spare some hot water.” the cursed boy said, gesturing at his currently feminine body. “And some for p-” glancing backwards to where his father had been standing, he instead saw a broom still in the process of falling down to earth, with Genma making remarkably good time down the street now that he was no longer on the clock. “Er, just me then, I guess.”

“Oh, yes! Of course, step right this way.” The good doctor gave Ranma an inviting gesture as he returned inside, and the boy followed him. Tofu checked the water level in his electric kettle before nodding in satisfaction and clicking it on. “Well, while we wait for that to heat up, please take a seat.” Ranma obliged, sitting down on the couch in the waiting area. “So, Ranma,” he asked, taking a seat opposite. “What have you been up to lately? I haven’t seen you since Akane hit you with that baseball a couple weeks ago!” Tofu laughed at the memory, while Ranma grimaced.

“Oh, you know. School. Trainin’. The usual.” Ranma hugged his sides. Dr. Tofu was very easy to talk to most of the time, but Ranma didn’t want what he’d gotten up to today getting too far, and the doc was… flighty, under the wrong circumstances.

Tofu simply kept smiling. Ranma was  _ sure  _ he could tell that he wasn’t getting the whole truth out of his guest, but the doctor’s face betrayed nothing. The next few minutes were spent with Dr. Tofu asking questions about school, or remarking on the storm they’d had Saturday night, all of which elicited single-syllable responses from Ranma. Finally, they were distracted by the whistling of the kettle.

“Ah! Let me get that.” Dr. Tofu said as he stood up.

Ranma was relieved to see the doctor return with a glass of steaming water, instead of a full, boiling kettle. “I figured this should be hot enough.” Tofu explained. Ranma nodded gratefully. He never got this kind of consideration from anyone at the dojo. As Tofu paused with the glass raised, he cocked his head to the side and gave Ranma a strange grin. “Now Ranma, I understand if it’s hard,” he said. “But I want you to know that you can come to me with anything. The doctor/patient confidentiality extends beyond injuries, you know.”

“W-what?” Ranma asked, startled. “What d’you mean?”

“Oh, nothing.” Tofu said, still giving Ranma a knowing smile. As he began to tip the glass, he paused once more. “By the way, that shade of lipstick is  _ lovely,  _ Ranma!”

_ “WH-” _

_ (SPLASH) _

Ranma stood there, having jumped to his feet, and was breathing heavily. He ran into the bathroom to check his face. His chest settled down slightly as he saw a masculine face stare back, hair wet but face free of makeup. It helped that said chest was high enough off the ground to be visible in the mirror, and was decidedly broad and flat. Still, there was the slight matter of…

“Pops.”

“Hm? Did you say something, Ranma?”

“Pops,” he repeated. “He saw me when I came in. W-wearin’ the…” Ranma gulped. “Y’know.” His shoulders slumped. “I’m  _ done  _ for.”

“Oh, is Mr. Saotome your father? I should have known!” Ranma simply boggled at the tall man in front of him. “Not much of a family resemblance, I must say!” Tofu joked. “Though I understand he usually wears glasses when he’s human?” Ranma nodded. “Ah, I thought so! That would explain the trouble he had telling the difference between the broom and the rake earlier.”

Ranma blinked. Surely Dr. Tofu couldn’t be suggesting what it seemed like he was… And yet, his father clearly hadn’t been angry at him earlier, and it wasn’t like he noticed when Ranma applied fresh eyeliner anyway.

Brightening significantly, Ranma made his way to the door. “Hey, doc?” he said, turning back.

“Yes Ranma?”

The martial artist smiled. “...Thanks.”

_________________

  
  


Shampoo had watched with some distaste as the Ranma girl stripped down on the roof of the clinic.  _ No shame at all,  _ she thought. She was confused as to why she changed into her Chinese silks before entering. Nearly 10 minutes passed, and Shampoo began to wonder if she should have attempted to follow the Panda when the door opened again. A young man in an outfit identical to the one the Ranma girl had changed into, with his black hair braided into a pigtail like the Ranma girl had, waved to someone inside before launching himself into the air and onto the rooftops in the same way the Ranma girl had just been doing.

The implications were clear to anyone with a knowledge of the cursed springs of Jusenkyo and a logical mind.

_ Very clever, Ranma.  _ Shampoo thought, smirking.  _ But it will take more than a Nanniichuan curse to fool Shampoo! _

_________________

  
  


Ranma could smell Kasumi’s cooking before he even walked into the house. Smelled like pork tonight, the rich aroma wafting out onto the grounds in the clouds of hot air billowing out the kitchen windows. “I’m home!” he called out once he had entered the building proper.

Kasumi turned around and smiled. “Welcome home, Ranma! Your father said that you met with Dr. Tofu on your way home?”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Figured I needed some hot water.” He looked at the burners of the stove, all currently engaged in boiling, frying, or otherwise heating something or other. “Guess I was right.”

The eldest Tendo sister giggled. “Yes, you’d be waiting a while if you had wanted to change here.” Noticing the box and bag that Ranma was holding, she looked puzzled. “Oh, what are those?”

“Oh, these? Well this is just something I wanted to pick up today,” he said, lifting the box. “And this…” he continued, holding the bag up, “...is a change of clothes. Figured I should start carrying something around for when I get wet.” Ranma hoped that Kasumi didn’t delve too much deeper than she already had. While he hadn’t  _ technically  _ told any lies as such, if she actually looked in the bag she’d have been in for a nasty shock.

Fortunately, Kasumi simply nodded and turned her attention back to her cooking. Relieved, Ranma made his way to his room, hoping to stash his bra in the closet and get Nabiki’s clothes back to her without encountering his father. Opening the door, he saw Ryoga sitting cross-legged on his futon, head bowed. His eyes, which had been hidden under his bangs, shot open as he jerked his head up to glare at Ranma. Ranma couldn’t be certain, but a hint of redness at the edges of Ryoga’s eyes almost made it look like he’d been crying.

“O-oh! Hey there buddy.” Ranma said, thrown off by the intense atmosphere.

“Ranma.” Ryoga responded, flatly.

Ranma couldn’t think of anything to say. Ryoga was pretty clearly upset at him, and he didn’t know why. So he just stood there in the doorway.

Eventually, Ryoga sighed. “Close the door, Ranma.” After the pigtailed boy did so and began to make his way to their shared closet, Ryoga spoke again. “So were you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?”

“That you liked boys too.”

This question earned a yelp from Ranma, who dropped both his bag of clothes and his new gunpla kit. Ryoga picked the latter up, tutting. “Careful now, Ranma.” he said in a voice full of false concern. “You’ll damage this lovely gift your new boyfriend Hiroshi got you.”

“H-Hiro didn’t get me-” Ranma stopped, trying to compose himself.  _ “Hiroshi  _ didn’t get me this. And we’re not dating! And what do you mean,  _ too?!” _

“Never mind,” Ryoga said, sad eyes looking down at the box. “Doesn’t matter anymore.” He looked at the label on the side of the box. “You say you got this?” Ranma nodded. “Alright,” placing it behind him, he looked his friend in the eye. “What’s it called?”

_ Shit,  _ Ranma thought, sweating.  _ Should have paid more attention to Hiroshi when he was talking during our date. It started with a “Z”, right? Think, Ranma, think! _

“It’s, a, uh,” suddenly struck with the only “Z” word he could remember, he figured that must be it. “I-it’s a Zabi, obviously.”

“It’s a Zaku, Ranma.” Ryoga whipped the box across the room at the other boy. “The Zabis are the Zeon royal family.”

Fumbling to catch the box, Ranma couldn’t help but wonder if everyone he knew had seen this show but him. Once he had a grip on it, he watched Ryoga leave the room. “R-Ryoga, wait!” he called after his friend. “I-I promise, I didn’t know you felt that way! I’m sorry!”

From behind, he saw Ryoga’s shoulders slump as he sighed. He turned to face him, tears now obviously visible gathering in the corners of his eyes. “Ranma… It’s okay. I had my chance, and I botched it.” Turning away, Ranma saw his shoulders begin to shake. “I never showed up. Couldn’t even find my own backyard.”

“Couldn’t even find your-” Realization and horror dawned in quick succession on Ranma’s face. A fanged boy from middle school. A letter asking to meet at a specific time, in a specific place. And, evidently, a horrible misunderstanding by a younger yet no-less-competitive pigtailed martial artist. “... _ No.  _ Ryoga,  _ wait!” _

Ryoga sighed again, deeper this time. “...I’m not going anywhere. I don’t miss being lost.” He began to walk towards the living room. “I-” He sniffed slightly. “I’m happy for you, man.” he said miserably.

Ranma went back into the room, putting the bra in the recesses of his half of the closet and setting the Zaku box on the desk. Having taken care of the most pressing issues, he proceeded to lay on his back on the futon and stared at the ceiling until Kasumi called everyone for dinner.

_________________

  
  


There was a light clatter of shingles as the small Chinese girl alighted atop a house across the street from the Tendo dojo. Shampoo was impressed. The compound easily took up an entire city block, and even in this more rural area of Tokyo it must have been expensive, or else very old. Mentally trying to get an idea of the layout of the house, she noticed the Panda from before sitting down to a game of shogi with a tall, moustachioed man with long black hair and clad in a gi. She smiled. This was  _ definitely  _ the right place. And in such a convenient location in relation to the restaurant, too.

Killing Ranma was going to be easier than she thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was wondering if the bit with Genma needing glasses in his panda form made any sense, and then I remembered that Mousse exists.


	10. Wrestling With Your Sexuality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kasumi gets suspicious. Ryoga gets an invite. Shampoo gets some intel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! Combination of starting both a re-animated project and a new job really kept me busy through January. I promise the next chapter won't take 5 weeks, haha.

Dinner that night was a far more subdued affair than usual. Rather than the usual flurry of activity between Ranma and Genma’s plates, the pigtailed boy instead made absolutely no attempt to defend his plate, opting instead to plead with his friend to talk to him. Ryoga, for his part, was refusing to engage in any conversation whatsoever, instead just efficiently shoveling food from his plate to his mouth with the minimum of fuss. This stark change in the dinner table dynamics didn’t go unnoticed, with everyone else at the table barely able to make their usual small talk without occasionally glancing at the scene in front of them. Even Genma eventually stopped stealing his son’s food, though if this was out of concern or boredom at the lack of challenge was anyone’s guess.

Eventually, Ryoga finished his meal and laid his chopsticks down. “Thank you for the meal, Kasumi.” he said as he scooted back from the table and stood up. He started walking in the direction he probably assumed was towards his room, and Ranma made to follow him, having not touched his meal at all.

“Ryoga, wait, please!” Ranma could be heard shouting to his friend as they made their way towards the stairs.

Akane stared at the empty archway where her fiancé and his best friend had exited through. She knew Ranma had been upset about something at school, but he and Ryoga at least seemed to be getting along well enough as they left with Ranma’s other friends. Finishing her own meal, she excused herself and went to follow them up the stairs, where Ryoga had wound up in front of the door to Akane’s room at the end of the hall.

“Oh good, you’re here.” she said to the boys in front of her as she approached. “Come in. We clearly need to talk.” Forgetting themselves momentarily, they both looked at each other in surprise as she pushed past them, opening her door. Ryoga raised an eyebrow, to which Ranma shrugged. The two of them followed Akane inside, with her making sure the door shut and latched before turning back to them. “Alright,” she said, looking at each of them in turn. “What’s going on between you two?”

“G-goin’ on?” Ranma asked. “N-nothin’s goin’ on!”

“Yeah,” Ryoga said bitterly. “Nothing at  _ all,  _ especially not when Ranma’s dating  _ Hiroshi.”  _ The look on his face as he spat the last word could have soured milk.

Akane sighed, but smiled.  _ Guess I was right about them,  _ she thought. She turned to Ryoga and said “Okay, well. I  _ think  _ I know what’s going on here, but there’s no reason to insinuate that Ranma’s dating his friend.”

Her relief was disrupted by the sound of Ranma loudly clearing his throat. When she whipped her head around to look at him, her eyes widened as she saw a blush creep up his face and his eyes avoid her own. “Oh Ranma, you  _ aren’t…” _

“I… kinda am, yeah.” he said, embarrassed. “Or at least,  _ Ranko  _ is.”

Akane blinked. “Ranko?”

Nonplussed enough to forget his current mix of anger and jealousy for a moment, Ryoga echoed Akane’s confusion. “Who the heck is Ranko?”

“It’s… the name I gave Hiroshi. For my girl half.” he sighed. “I didn’t exactly want you guys to find out about it. Not like this, at least.” Ranma went quiet for a bit, debating whether or not now would be a good time to tell them about the name currently adorning his bras.  _ Ah well, no way this could get any worse.  _ “A-and… it’s also the name I gave the girl at the clothing store I went to, when she told me I could monogram my things.” He tried very desperately to ignore the increasingly worried stare from his fiancée, or the intense one he was getting from his best friend.

“Okay, but… why?” Akane asked, struggling to understand. “Why have a second name to confuse things? I’d have thought your life was chaotic enough as it was!”

"I-I panicked!" Ranma said, a touch too defensively. He deflated slightly under the combined concerned gazes of Ryoga and Akane.

"Ranma…?" Ryoga asked, anger all but disappeared. In its place was something that almost resembled empathy.

_ Dang it,  _ he thought.  _ Who gave 'em the right to be this cute? It's not fair. _ "Well, like… it's…" he sighed again. "Givin' out my regular name when I'm lookin' like that feels  _ weird,  _ y'know? So I just… used the name I figure I'd have had if I'd have been born a girl." More staring. Ryoga was nodding and looked like he was trying to remember something, while Akane was busy maintaining her best stone face. “I-it’s just that Hiroshi asked me if I knew the cute girl he saw at the mall who waved at him and I said ‘yeah she’s my sister Ranko’ because I couldn’t just tell him it was  _ me  _ that he saw and then he asked her out on a date and I, I, I-”

“Ranma!” Akane shouted, mercifully cutting him off. “First of all, you could have told him that you didn’t know her.” Ranma groaned. Of  _ course  _ he could have. “And second of all,” his fiancée continued, “you could have just had ‘Ranko’ tell him  _ no.” _

Ranma almost slapped himself.  _ Oh my god, I could have said NO,  _ he thought.  _ Except,  _ he bit his lip as another thought took its place.  _ I didn’t WANT to say no… _

Not noticing her fiancé’s inner turmoil, Akane continued. “We’re here to talk about you and Ryoga, not…” she gestured at him and waved her hand vaguely in the air. “...whatever this other thing is about.” She sighed, exasperated. “I swear, you are the  _ only  _ boy I’ve ever met who’s thought about what their girl name would be.”

Suddenly, a large fist smacked into an equally large palm. “Yoiko!” Ryoga said triumphantly.

“Pardon?” Akane asked, clearly knocked off mental balance by all this.

"O-oh, that’s…” Ryoga blushed as he came back to reality. “...that’s what my mom told me she’d have named me if I had been a girl.” He looked up, smiling as he disappeared once again into his memories. “I remember asking her about it  _ years  _ ago…”

Akane ignored all this for now. This conversation had a  _ purpose,  _ and that purpose was to force these two idiots to talk to each other. She would  _ not _ have any more distractions from that! It was  _ her  _ name on the duck attached to the door, and by god that meant  _ her word was law. “Ryoga!”  _ she snapped. “We’re here because you were upset with Ranma!” 

The muscular boy blinked, surprised at being yanked from his reverie once again. The past  _ was  _ a foreign country, and it seemed like he was just as prone to getting lost in it. “R-right.” Meek embarrassment turned to anger as he remembered what he saw earlier that day, and he rounded on his friend. "Right! Ranma, I went through junior high thinking I was  _ completely alone! _ I thought… I thought that if you knew, a-about me…” Ryoga clutched his left arm at the elbow, the other one firmly against his chest. Unable to meet his friend’s gaze, he cast his eyes down slightly. “About how I felt… I thought you’d leave me. That you’d join all the other boys at school in avoiding me.”

“So I was a coward about it. I didn’t tell you. How could I? You were my only friend in that whole school, Ranma. And then…” Ryoga’s voice hitched, a warble entering at the periphery. When he looked up, Ranma could see that his eyes were wet with tears. “...And then you told me you were leaving. Going to China with your dad.” 

Akane shifted uncomfortably. She had been expecting more shouting. She was used to shouting with Ranma, shouting she could handle. With shouting you eventually either kept shouting until everyone left the room in a huff or until someone (Akane) began to get a case of the twitchy fists. Instead she was looking at Ryoga, who wielded a 300 pound umbrella like a sabre, blubbering like a child. And as for Ranma, her fiancé and heir to the Saotome school of Anything Goes…

Akane shuddered. She didn’t know it was  _ possible  _ for a person to look this wretched.

Crossing her arms over her chest, subconsciously closing her body language off, Akane stood awkwardly apart from her two friends as Ryoga finally collected himself enough to continue. “So I figured, what the hell? You were leaving, school was almost out, and I’d never have to see anyone there ever again. Worst case scenario, I’d-” He paused as a number of vignettes flashed through his mind, and swallowed. “I’d deal with it. And so,” leveling his eyes directly at Ranma’s, whose face was screwed up with guilt in the knowledge of what was coming. “I sent you the letter.”

“Ryoga,” Ranma said, “I  _ swear  _ I thought it was a challenge letter. I-if I’da known-”

“No, don’t, just…” Ryoga exhaled through his nose. “Just don’t. I was an idiot who sent my crush a challenge letter instead of an invitation to make sure he showed up. I left early to try and make it in time, but when I showed up and you weren’t there… I knew I’d taken too long, but-” screwing his eyes shut, the tears that had been pooling there rolled down his cheeks. “B-but I thought I’d be able to tell you at school! Tell you before you left! But when I got back to school, 5 days later...” He took one last, shuddering breath, barely keeping himself together. “You were  _ gone!” _

Everyone in the room was quiet for what felt like a long time, with only the sounds of Ryoga’s haggard panting breaking the silence. Finally, Ranma stopped staring a hole through Akane’s floor to look up at his friend.

“You… you were’ gonna tell me you liked me?” he asked, face breaking out in a nervous smirk.

Ryoga stared at Ranma, dumbfounded.  _ “YES!”  _ he shouted,  _ “Yes, Ranma!  _ I  _ LIKE  _ you! I  _ HAVE  _ liked you, for years! You happy now?”

Amazingly, it seemed like Ranma  _ was  _ happy. Or at the very least, he was laughing. As Ryoga watched, frothing with rage, Akane sighed in relief.  _ Oh, thank God,  _ she thought.  _ With any luck this will all end in a fistfight. _

_ “What’s so funny, Ranma?!”  _ Ryoga demanded, gripping the smaller boy by the upper arms and lifting him to his feet.

“Yeah, Ranma!” Akane said, happy to be on familiar footing for once. “What’s the big idea?”

Still laughing, Ranma casually broke out of Ryoga’s grip, grinning at him as they locked eyes. “Why d’ya think I waited  _ three days  _ for you, ya dummy?” Smiling wider, he broke out into laughter again as Ryoga stood there blushing and speechless.

“I-I thought, I mean-” he began, embarrassed. “I kinda thought you just really wanted to fight.”

“Weellllll, it was  _ partly  _ that.” Ranma said. “Also partly to get away from pops before we left on the trainin’ journey.” After noticing Ryoga deflating slightly and Akane glaring, he quickly threw up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “H-hey! That woulda bought you a day, maybe! The rest of it was all just me wantin’ to tell you how I felt before pops dragged me off to China.”

Ryoga smiled. “And this would be  _ after  _ you beat me in our fight?

“Sure would!” Ranma said. “Don’t really see how it’d have gone any other way.”

As the two boys embraced and started laughing, Akane collapsed onto her bed, exhausted despite her limited involvement in what had just taken place in her room. Something was  _ wrong  _ here, they were forgetting something  _ important. _

“Um, not to interrupt you two,” she began slowly. “But didn’t you mention something about Ranma dating Hiroshi, Ryoga?”

The effect was as immediate as a popping balloon. Ryoga’s shoulders slumped and his arms fell to his side, his smile dying on his lips. Ranma flinched as though he’d been struck.

“Jeez Akane, way to sour the mood.” Ranma muttered.

Feeling her temper rising, Akane puffed out her chest and balled her hands into fists. “Well ex- _ cuse  _ me for trying to keep us focused!” she shouted. “Date Hiroshi or date Ryoga if you want, but you can’t do  _ both!” _

Ranma’s posture sank and the annoyed edge left his voice. “Yeah… guess you’re right.” He sighed. “Guess I just don’t like the idea of choosin’. It’d just be easier if I didn’t have to worry about it, y’know?”

Akane paled, her eyes widening as she produced a mental image of the only person she knew who thought the same way. “...You don’t mean like  _ Kuno,  _ do you?” she asked, horrified.

_ “What?”  _ asked Ranma, affronted. “No! No, ‘course not. I just… I think about it, sometimes.”

Staring into two uncomprehending faces, Ranma sighed in defeat and sat on the bed next to his fiancée. Ryoga followed soon after, settling himself down rather closer to his longtime friend than was truly necessary. Ranma’s first instinct was to shove him off, but he figured he’d let Ryoga have this, at least for now. Hesitating slightly, he decided to lean into the muscular form next to him, so long as he was here. He felt Ryoga’s muscles tense up in shock as he looked at his friend. Ryoga stared back with eyes like saucers, before glancing down at Ranma’s shoulder and back up again. Despite not saying a word, the question being asked was clear, and Ranma gave a quick nod. Gulping, Ryoga’s shoulders relaxed to the point where both boys were more or less leaning on each other.

_ You know,  _ Ranma thought.  _ This ain’t half bad. No, actually...  _ He smiled.  _ This is nice. _

The room was quiet for a while, with the three teens simply sitting together on the bed enjoying a closeness that none of them were very accustomed to. Suddenly, a thought struck Akane, and the snorting giggle she failed to stifle gained the attention of her two bedmates.

“What’s so funny, Akane?” Ranma asked.

“Oh, it’s just that…” she said, with the stupid grin of someone who knows they’re about to make the worst joke of their lives. “...I’ve finally had boys in my bed.”

There was a minute pause as Ranma and Ryoga both looked at her and blinked where you not only could have heard a pin drop, but had a pretty decent chance of guessing the brand. Ranma, however, soon threw back his head in peals of laughter, quickly throwing his back down onto the bed. Ryoga, who was also laughing, was thrown off balance by the removal of Ranma’s side pressed against his and proceeded to fall stomach-first onto his erstwhile structural support. Knocking the breath out of the pigtailed teen momentarily, the two boys looked at each other in surprise, blushing slightly, before breaking out in, if not the boisterous laughter of before, then certainly titters edged with embarrassment.

Akane smiled as she looked down at them. It was hard to believe that only last week the two of them had been trying to kill each other. Come to think of it, just yesterday she had been pretty awful to them, and to Yuka and Sayuri, too. And now both of those relationships seemed to be on the mend. She was talking to them, at least. It was a pleasant enough distraction for the few moments before the realization that she was engaged to one half of the rapidly forming couple laying on her bed hit her like a ton of bricks. She groaned and flopped down with them. Akane liked Ranma, she really did. Despite the circumstances, despite her…  _ proclivities, _ she thought as she blushed, he wasn’t that bad. You know, for a boy. She really needed anything else but this right now, and Akane knew that she'd have to deal with the whole "arranged marriage" situation sooner or later. But right here, and right now, she was content to lay on the bed with her friends.

Content to, at least, until the door was bumped open with a hip and Kasumi entered the room laundry basket first.

"Oh Akane," she began asking before she was entirely through the threshold. "I was just gathering laundry from everyone, do you have anythiiiiiii…" Her normally chipper voice flattened as she trailed off, staring at the scene in front of her.

Akane sat up so quickly it looked like she had been electrocuted, and Ranma did his best to prop himself up to see over the bulk of the boy laying on his stomach. Both of them gave a panicked glance at each other before turning their focus to the Eldest Tendo daughter. They were both waiting for the proverbial second shoe to drop.

Ryoga was not.

"Oh, hi Kasumi!" he said cheerfully.

“Hello, Ryoga.” Kasumi examined the scene in front of her for a few more seconds, eyes narrowing. Then, in a tone so clipped it could well have been topiary, she asked the assembled trio “And just what is going on in here, hm?”

Akane gained her mental footing first. "Th-the boys were wrestling!"

"We were?" Ranma and Ryoga asked in unison.

"You were." Akane said, wordlessly pleading with Ranma to go along with her.

"...We were." Ranma said.

"Wrestling." Kasumi said, flatly.

"Y-yeah, and Akane was doin' the judging." Ranma continued.

"I was?" she asked.

"You were." he said, nodding.

"I was." she affirmed.

"...You were?" Ryoga asked, confused.

"I was" "She was."

Pursing her lips, Kasumi studied the teens in front of her before putting on a sweet smile and kneeling down in front of Ryoga. "Ryoga, why don't  _ you  _ tell me what's going on here. Be honest now."

"W-well," he began, still confused as to what was going on. "I was really upset with Ranma, and, um…"

"Yes? It's okay, Ryoga. You can trust me."

Ryoga paused, and considered the implications that Kasumi's words contained as he looked over at the nervous faces of his friends. He didn't know  _ why  _ Ranma or Akane would lie to Kasumi like this, but there had to be a reason. He had to trust them.

Pausing to gulp, he finished with "Um, well, we decided to settle our differences by fighting."

Clearly this was not what Kasumi was expecting to hear, as she blinked in surprise and stood back up. Crossing her arms and irritably tapping her index finger on her arm, she glared at the three of them. "Well why didn't you do this in the dojo?" she asked in exasperation.

"Ryoga got lost on the way and we all followed him here." Ranma said, considerably less nervously because it was in fact the truth.

Despite the sour look on her face, Kasumi nodded. That made sense, at least.

“Well just… don’t hurt yourselves. Or break anything.” Quickly glancing around the room, she randomly grabbed a shirt from off the back of the chair at Akane’s desk and left with one final glance back at the trio on the bed.

After the door clicked shut behind her, you could practically see it bow outward from three collective held breaths being released. Seeing Ryoga start to open his mouth, Akane clamped a hand over it and placed a finger over her own. Living with Nabiki her whole life had led to her being very wary about eavesdroppers (though thankfully, she seemed to have stopped listening at the door recently). “Kasumi’s right, you two. We should take this somewhere else.” she said just a tad louder than necessary, staring at the door.

As the three of them exited Akane’s room, you could just about see the back of Kasumi’s head hurrying downstairs, her ponytail bouncing along behind her.

Akane let out her breath again. “Okay, good.” she said. “...We probably  _ should  _ talk somewhere else, though.”

“How ‘bout the park?” Ranma suggested.

“Good idea.”

Ryoga stood up and placed his hands on his hips petulantly. “Is anybody going to tell me why we lied to a nice lady like Kasumi?”

Ranma and Akane winced and looked at each other. “We’ll… talk about it on the walk over.” Akane said, before the three teens left her room and headed downstairs themselves.

_______________________

  
  


Nabiki took off her large pair of over-the-ear headphones and scooted the whole listening setup under her bed where it usually remained hidden. It had cost her a not insignificant sum, not to mention a faked illness on the night of the last New Year’s festival to get bugs placed in places where she was  _ absolutely certain  _ her family wouldn’t find them. Kasumi or her father would likely “only” result in a castigation and an immediate end to her more questionable activities. But Akane? Nabiki was  _ plenty _ happy with the number and location of her teeth, thank you very much.

Still though, it was absolutely worth every yen. Information could be leveraged as blackmail or just straight up sold to whoever wanted it, and a  _ lot  _ of the boys at Furinkan High wanted information on not only Akane, but Kasumi as well. Still, though. She'd hate to think about what would happen if someone who was actually  _ dangerous  _ collected information like this.

_______________________

  
  


" <Reconnaissance, day one:>"

The indigo-haired girl paused for a second, thinking. "<part two.>" she amended. Shampoo was still perched across the street from the Tendo home, pair of binoculars in hand. "<I have tracked the Ranma girl to the place where she and her panda are staying which seems to be a dojo. At 1730 hours she and her two friends (one male, one female) retired to what appears to be the other girl's room. A heated discussion ensued, however I only have a visual on them from my current vantage point.>"

Shampoo lounged on the roof that served as her spotter's nest, trying in vain to get comfortable on the shingles. She looked back into the window only to find an empty bedroom.

_ Shit,  _ she thought. Looking around frantically at every window and doorway she could see into, she eventually saw the three friends leave the house via the front door. Heartbeat slowing as she forced herself to calm down, she pulled out her tape recorder once more as she packed away her binoculars and prepared to follow at a distance.

"<Update: Ranma and company are on the move at 1750 hours. Trailing them to hopefully gather more useful information. End of log.>"

_______________________

  
  


Not a lot of people were at the park at this hour, which suited the teens who sat on a secluded bench just fine. Though Ranma and Ryoga eyed the fountain they were near warily, they conceded that it would likely help to give them more privacy, especially when paired with the rhododendrons that ringed the area and lent their fragrant scent to the air. In any other context, it would have been incredibly romantic. The mood, however, was soured by Ryoga's despondent cries.

"It's not true!" he shouted. "I don't believe you! Kasumi is a lovely woman, she'd never believe something so awful!"

"Ryoga, I don't want to believe it either, but…" Akane grabbed at her friend's hands to lower them onto his lap. "...Yuka and Sayuri didn't have any reason to lie to me. And they did stop coming by after that day…"

Ryoga paused. Akane’s friends had been wonderful people, and he was sure they wouldn’t just  _ lie  _ to her, but…

“Well what about Nabiki?” He said, turning towards Ranma. “She  _ definitely  _ lied. Probably just spoke from a place of jealousy.”

“No, man, I think…” Ranma hesitated, not sure if it was alright for him to tell Ryoga and Akane about Nabiki and her girlfriend. Then he remembered exactly who it was he was worried for the privacy of. “I think she was speaking from a place of  _ experience.” _

If Ryoga looked surprised at that, he had nothing on Akane. “W-what?” she asked, blushing. “What do you  _ mean  _ from experience?”

“Uh, well,” Ranma responded, nervously licking his lips. “I  _ may  _ have walked in on her and her friend Kikuko and interrupted somethin’.” A moment passed before he realized what that must have sounded like. “N-not like  _ that!”  _ he said as Akane blanched and the rush of blood to Ryoga’s face threatened to break some vessels in his nose. “I knocked on her door when they were kissin’ each other, that’s all. Nabiki had some marks on her neck and stuff.”

Color returned to Akane’s face as it left Ryoga’s, until the two of them almost resembled their normal complexions.

“A-anyway, she helped me with my whole bra situation. Warned me that it’d be a bad idea to let Kasumi know about it. Told me…” Ranma glanced at Akane, who nodded. “...Told me about why Akane started growing her hair out. Apparently she said Akane was like havin’ a boy for a sister.”

“...Is that true?” Ryoga asked, turning back to Akane.

Akane nodded again. “Yeah. Your big sis calling you a boy when you’re just a kid… it’s, well,” she looked at the two boys next to her. “You two probably didn’t have to deal with that. But you can probably imagine why I didn’t like it.”

“Yeah, obviously.” Ranma said. “I don’t think  _ anybody’d  _ want that.”

This earned him a slightly puzzled look from Akane, and an excited one from Ryoga. Confused, Ranma asked “What? You guys’re lookin’ at me funny.”

“It’s… nothing Ranma.” Akane said, giving him a bemused but good-natured smile. “You’re just a very odd boy.” she said, leaning against him.

Looking at Ryoga on his other side, his friend was giving him a nervous grin and looked like he desperately wanted to ask him something, but was holding back.  _ Whatever,  _ Ranma thought.  _ If he wants to tell me something without Akane hearing he’ll have plenty of chances later. _

“Oh, um,” Ranma remembered his conversation during lunch. “Kuno gave me these tickets during lunch. Sort of a way of sayin’ sorry I guess.” He flashed the front row tickets to the Martial Arts Rhythmic Gymnastics tournament from out of his wallet.

Ryoga’s eyes lit up. “No way! High schools have Martial Arts Gymnastics teams? That’s so cool!”

Akane took the tickets and studied them. From what she understood of the seating chart, they looked like they were front and center. If anyone could afford to give these away like they were nothing, it was Kuno. “...And you said Kuno gave these to you? What’s the catch?”

“I don’t think there was one? He told me to invite someone, and I really only know you two, so…”

Akane snorted. “And you’re telling me he gave you these on Ryoga’s first day at Furinkan? Yeah, he just wanted you to bring me or ‘the pigtailed girl’ along with you, the creep.”

“I mean… I guess?” Ranma said. “But if he did why wouldn’t he have just given you or ‘her’ a ticket in person? You know how he is. ‘Sides, he said he was goin’ with his sister.”

"Sister?" Akane asked, surprised. "I didn't know Kuno had a sister…" She handed the tickets back to Ranma. "Even if this is totally innocent, I'm not really interested."

"O-oh, yeah. Okay. Uh, Ryoga. Would you like t-"

_ "YES." _

_______________________

  
  


Unnoticed by the teens on the bench, a pink and purple cat slunk away from it's cozy hiding spot at the base of a rhododendron bush. Cats look like they think they're better than you by default, and if you didn't know any better you might think that this one was downright smug.

It trotted down the streets of Nerima, tail raised in the air and twitching happily, before heading down an alley that led to the rear entrance to the Nekohanten. After a few minutes spent scratching on the door and meowing, the door was opened by the restaurant's ancient proprietor.

"Ah, welcome home, great-granddaughter." Cologne said. "Let me heat you up some water."

Shampoo purred with self-satisfaction.  _ A martial arts gymnastics tournament,  _ she thought.  _ Now there's an opportunity. _


	11. Every Black Rose Has Its Thorn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oh my god she's finally here

“So, you’re saying your name is…” the coach of St. Hebereke’s rhythmic gymnastics team squinted at the application in front of her. _“...Shampoo?”_

“Yes.” the strange girl said, smiling.

“Riiiiiiiiggghhht.” Coach Sato pinched the bridge of her nose. Today had been exhausting. First there was the extra practice sessions with the team to prepare for the upcoming match (she winced as she remembered the abysmal performance. They didn’t stand a _chance_ against Furinkan), which had carried on for hours. And then, at nearly 7 PM, some Chinese girl had knocked on her window to get her attention.

Her _second story_ window.

Dumbfounded, she had let the purple-haired girl in and boggled vacantly as she handed her papers declaring that she was the best fighter from some backwater called Joketsuzoku and was apparently on a, quote, “mission of vengeance”. As she babbled away about a stolen prize and some Ranma girl, a thought struck Sato.

_This girl effortlessly climbed up to the second floor and then vaulted through my window._

She looked this Shampoo girl up and down, noting well-defined arms, a firm midsection, and legs that looked like they could crack open a coconut.

_I can use this._

“Listen, miss Shampoo,” she began.

Shampoo stopped mid-rant about the evil she-devil who she had been chasing across Asia and sat demurely with her hands in her lap, the picture of innocent attentiveness.

Sato put on her best grin (given the circumstances) and continued. “Your enthusiasm is appreciated, and I think you’d be a welcome addition to St. Hebereke’s gymnastics team! Now, geeeeenerally there’d be some paperwork to fill out, classes to attend and so forth, but seeing as how the match with Furinkan is a week from tomorrow I think we can waive all that.” She grinned, thinking of the eternally empty spot in the trophy case finally being filled. 

Before she shook hands with her ticket to minor high school athletics stardom, she couldn’t help but feel the eyes of a wooden effigy of a man being crucified behind her desk boring into her.

“U-uh, there is _one_ thing, however.” Sato said, grin becoming just the slightest bit strained. “I’m sure you understand that St. Heberke’s School for Girls is a _Catholic_ school, and (this is only a formality, I assure you) I do have to ask that as an athlete at our fine school you welcome the Lord into your heart (haha).”

The coach looked on as Shampoo’s enthusiastic smile changed subtly, and the excited twinkle in her eye hardened into something more like the cold sheen of steel. Shampoo was too young to remember them properly, but Cologne had told her the stories of the last Christian missionaries to visit Joketsuzoku. _Most_ of them returned home. None came again.

“No,” she said after a while. “Shampoo no do that.”

Coach Sato, now well and truly terrified of the foreign girl in front of her, did the only sensible thing. “Great!” she croaked. “No problem! Love to have you aboard!”

She and the Shampoo girl shook hands. Sato couldn’t be sure, and later would swear it was her imagination acting up after a long day, but she felt some kind of shock when they touched their fingers together. _Just a simple static shock,_ she thought later. _Nothing weird about that._ Never mind that it was nearly June in Tokyo and the temperature was currently hovering around 70 degrees, and that it was humid besides. Never mind the way that Shampoo girl grinned. She worked under _nuns_ for crying out loud. She could _not_ be accused of making deals with the devil!

She thought guiltily about last year’s championship match.

Not _again._

_______________________

  
  


Ranma, Akane, and Ryoga were walking to school, the morning at the Tendo’s having been uneventful thanks to the three of them all deeming it wise to avoid talking too much about their personal lives under the same roof as Kasumi and Genma.

“Ranma, get down from there!” Akane yelled. The subject of her annoyance was striding along the top of the chain link fence as he always did, despite having fallen into the river below more than a couple times already. When pressed, Ranma would say it was a form of balance training, though Akane always wondered why he couldn’t just do that on a normal balancing beam instead of regularly making them late for school. Though now, as a semi-outside observer, she noticed how he kept glancing down at her and Ryoga as if trying to make sure he was being watched, and how his chest seemed to puff out when he noticed the attention he was getting.

_Oh, my god._ Akane realized, half amused and half mortified. _He’s been trying to flirt with me all month._

Noticing Akane stifling her laughter, Ranma looked down, puzzled. “What’s so funny, Akane?” he asked.

Still smiling, she looked back up at the pigtailed boy, who was now walking, talking, and most importantly, _distracted._ “Oh, nothing.” she said sweetly, a very stupid and very petty idea already forming in her head. Acting without thinking, she slowly swung her hips away from the fence before smashing them into it, causing the whole thing to wobble alarmingly.

"HEY! Akane, what th' hell do you think yer doi-" Ranma began, before gravity finished consulting with the curse and the two made a joint decision to send the boy riverward. "Whoaaa-" Pinwheeling his arms in a doomed attempt to nudge himself toward dry land, Ranma’s entire body whipped back and forth as his center of gravity made a valiant effort to remain above his feet. It was a futile effort, however, and the martial artist was soon falling to him imminent soaking. " _AAAAAAAAAA_ "

(SPLASH)

Ryoga and Akane were both snickering as a sopping wet redhead trudged onto the river bank. “You should be more careful, Ranma.” Akane said. “I was going to say, you’re liable to lose your balance up there!”

“Ha, ha.” Ranma deadpanned, wringing water out of his hair. “You couldn’t have at least made yer point _before_ we passed Dr. Tofu’s? How’m I gonna change back now?” he said, wild gesticulations pelting Akane and Ryoga with drops of water from his still-soaked arms.

“I’m sure you’ll figure out something.” Akane said with a smile.

“Yeah, yeah.” her fiancé groused, still trying to shake the worst of the moisture off. “Y’know, me showin’ up to Furinkan like this ain’t gonna help the situation with Hiroshi any.”

Ryoga’s ears perked up at this. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I _mean_ that he thinks me and my girl form are two different people! And ‘Ranko’ doesn’t go to Furinkan!” Ranma patted down his clothes, satisfied that the uncomfortable dampness would evaporate off before long, and side-eyed Akane. “If only _someone_ didn’t like pushing me into the river so much.” After a second he smirked. “Though… Guess it makes sense that you’d keep tryin’ to catch a show, knowin’ you like girls and all.” 

“Wh- how dare you suggest that! I am not!” Akane said indignantly, though the crimson blush on her cheeks said otherwise.

"I mean hey, I don't blame you." he said, shrugging. _“Anybody’d_ want _these_ babies!” Ranma punctuated his display of swollen-headedness by cupping his breasts.

Akane looked at him, exasperated. “Is it too late to reverse the whole ‘not a pervert’ thing?”

“Yup!” said Ranma happily. After a while spent grinning dumbly, he remembered what he had been talking about before getting distracted. Clearing his throat (and using the opportunity to finally release his chest) he turned back to Ryoga, whose eyes suddenly darted up to meet his own. “Anyway. At the end of our date Hiro invited himself over to the Dojo to meet Ranko again. That is,” he corrected himself. “He’s comin’ to meet me, in my girl form.”

Ryoga bristled slightly at the use of the cutesy nickname, but did his best not to show it. “So what do we do?” he asked.

“Only one thing we can,” said Ranma. “We gotta tell him about the curse. Figure he won’t wanna date ‘Ranko’ after that, not with knowin’ who ‘she’ really is.”

Nodding their assent, the trio continued on the walk to school, Ranma resigning himself to getting himself some hot water in the nurse’s office before class. Having already transformed, he didn’t bother to maintain his usual vigilance for the local woman who had the bad habit of washing the sidewalk in front of her house _right_ as Ranma and Akane headed to class. Today was no different, and Ranma rolled his eyes as he felt a generous portion of the ladle full of cold water splash him. _Man, even if Akane HADN’T knocked me into the river, it wouldn’t have mattered._ As he walked away, he was surprised to see Akane looking at the ground in terror. Realizing who was walking next to him, he followed her gaze to a wriggling pile of wet clothes next to them, a small black piglet visible trying to escape from the cocoon of fabric.

_“Bwee BWEEEEEEE!”_ it screeched.

“Oh, uh, yeah.” Ranma scooped up Ryoga and hugged his porcine form to his chest. “So you remember how Ryoga wanted to kill me? And we didn’t know why? Well…”

_______________________

  
  


After the initial shock of seemingly discovering that her new friend was water soluble wore off, Akane quickly accepted that Ryoga had fallen into his own Jusenkyo spring while chasing after Ranma. After all, if Mr. Saotome could become a part-time panda, why not Ryoga a pig?

“Still,” she said, scratching a delighted piglet behind the ear. “It’s kind of weird you get so small, Ryoga.”

“Bwee?”

“What d’you mean?” asked Ranma.

“Well, you and your dad change size a _little,_ but…” Akane pantomimed Ranma’s height in his birth form vs how tall he was currently. “...you’re still _basically_ the same size. Ryoga’s just so _tiny!”_

More happy squealing came from the small animal in Ranma’s arms as Akane punctuated her maternal cooing with renewed scratches.

“Careful porkchop, or we might start to think you like this.” Ranma said.

“Buh- _wee!”_ he replied, with a tone that made it clear that human vocal cords would have output a dismissive “harumph”.

Rounding the corner to the gates of Furinkan High, their faces fell as they took in the massive crowd of boys milling about outside the school. After a quick headcount Akane groaned. “I don’t believe it! It’s the whole damn horde!” She glanced up at the clock that towered above the school’s entryway and bit her lip. “...You two go, quick. You need to change back before class starts.”

“Hold on,” Ranma said, taking a closer look at the crowd of boys. “They look… different than usual.”

Indeed, a second glance revealed that the throng, usually already psyching themselves up for the melee ahead by the time Akane and company got there, was instead standing at attention in a neat formation. There were also no baseball bats, hockey sticks, kendo swords, lacrosse sticks, boxing gloves, or other improvised weapons visible, all hands empty and held in front of the assembled boys. The group was attracting much more attention than usual, and many students seemed content to risk being late to class just to see what would happen.

Upon noticing their usual object of obsession, they as one prostrated themselves on the ground and grovelled “AKANE TENDO, PLEASE FORGIVE US!”

“W-what’s going on?” Akane asked the crowd. “What’re you up to? Who put you up to this?”

Before anyone in the horde could answer, a loud voice boomed down from above. “THAT WOULD BE I!”

As one, everyone standing at the entrance to Furinkan High looked up to see a figure launch itself out of the window directly in front of Akane and Ranma, briefly silhouetting itself in front of the sun before landing in a cloud of dust. Unfolding himself from his crouched position, streams of morning sunlight giving his fluffy brown bangs an otherworldly glow. Brandishing his bokken in front of him, he grinned and stepped forward towards the three friends.

“Tatewaki Kunoaa _ARGH!”_

As Kuno placed his weight on the foot that he landed on, it trembled as pain shot through an over-stressed ankle and he immediately collapsed, shattering the atmosphere that he had built up.

Hobbling over to Akane, he stood swaying on his remaining good leg, tears in his eyes, though whether from pain or emotion was hard to say. Clasping his hands onto her shoulders, he blinked a single tear out of his eye to regain some of the lost effect. “Akane Tendo, I wish most sincerely to apologize. And to you as well, my pigtailed goddess!” he said, turning to Ranma. Appearing not to notice as Akane stared at her shoulder in disgust, he clenched a hand in a fist as he continued. “I have acted in a way most unbecoming of a man of my stature, and led countless other members of the student body astray as well!” Kuno draped his arm over his head dramatically. “I would try to put this whole sordid chapter behind us, and start anew! So, Akane Tendo!” facing her again, he clapped his hand back on her shoulder to join the other one. “And pigtailed girl! I come to you today not as an opponent, but as a suitor! What say you? Will either of you date with me?”

Akane was still glaring furiously at Kuno, and through the course of his monologue her mouth had dropped open. A hollow hiss had begun to escape from somewhere near the back of her throat, as if her larynx was searching for swear words worse than those that actually existed. Meanwhile Ranma simply gave the upperclassman a tired look as he shrugged and said “Listen, Kuno. I’ve got enough boy troubles goin’ on to think about datin’ you, frankly.”

Tatewaki blinked at the redhead in surprise, while Akane simply slowly pivoted her head to gawp briefly at Ranma before returning her gaze to Kuno.”Well, Kuno.” she said, slowly reaching up to grab Kuno’s wrists. “Do you want to _know_ what I _think?”_

“Oh my dearest Akane Tendo, I would love nothing more!”

“I _think…”_ she tightened her grip on Kuno’s forearms and shifted her leg behind her. “...That you can TAKE YOUR GOD DAMN GENTLEMAN ACT AND _FUCKING SHOVE IT!”_ With prodigious strength, she whipped the larger boy in a full overhead arc before planting him in the ground so hard that several small plants were uprooted. Leaving his legs twitching in the air, Akane stormed into the school in a huff, the sea of boys assembled in front of the doors parting like the red sea ahead of her.

Ranma sighed as he looked at Kuno’s bottom half. “C’mon, let’s get him to the nurse, huh Ryoga?”

“Bwee!”

He set his transformed friend down and began the work of excavating Kuno. By the time Ranma was done, both he and Ryoga were surrounded by a group of female students, all of whom were excitedly trying to get a look at the piglet.

“Ohhhh, she’s so _cute!”_ a short girl with dark red hair squealed. “What’s her name?”

“Uh, he’s a boy actually.” Ranma responded, caught slightly off guard. “And his name’s, uh…” Thinking for a second of the nickname he’d given his friend earlier, he grinned. “His name’s P-chan!” _Take that, porkchop,_ he thought.

“Aww, how adorable!” a blonde girl said as Ryoga glared at Ranma.

“Oh! Oh! We should tie his little bandanna up in a bow!” said another girl, this one someone Ranma vaguely recognized as one of Akane’s acquaintances, the one with short brown hair and freckles.

“Yeah!”

“Um, ladies, I uh-” Ranma began, trying to get their attention without being rude. “I’m sorry, but could I have my pig back?”

The pack of girls who had been giggling and fussing over Ryoga stopped and turned to face him, before renewing their giggling with increased fervor.

“Did she just call us ‘ladies’? Last time I heard that it was from _Daisuke.”_

“Wait, you don’t think that she…”

“She _was_ hanging out with that Akane girl, after all…”

“Oh _ew,_ does she go here? What class is she in?”

Feeling the heat rising in his cheeks, Ranma snatched up Ryoga, his bandanna now tied in a fetching bow as opposed to the normal knot, and slung the unconscious Kuno over his shoulder. “Nah, I-I don’t go here. Just gotta pick up somethin’ and take this guy to the nurse, I guess.” He shouldered past the crowd of girls and into Furinkan High.

_______________________

  
  


Sneaking around while carrying 6 feet of Tatewaki Kuno was not the easiest task, but Ranma did his best. He would rather not run into the school nurse if he and Ryoga wanted to transform back with minimal fuss.

Tiptoeing into the office, he breathed a sigh of relief when he found it empty. The nurse was a transfer from a high school on the opposite side of Nerima, and as a result was often slightly late. She had apparently left due to difficulties with the male student body, which Ranma could understand, given her looks. He shuddered at the picture of her in his mind, however. She gave him the creeps. There was a rumor floating around that she had been a priestess of some kind, and that if you visited her too often she'd break out her exorcism gear. Ranma believed it, frankly. You got all types of weirdos out in Tomobiki-cho.

Dropping Kuno onto a bed, Ranma found the bathroom and placed Ryoga in the sink before turning on the hot water tap and leaving his clothes for him. Doing his best to make Kuno comfortable (or at the very least, not draped horizontally across the bed frame), Ranma heard a sound that he had never heard before, and yet was immediately able to identify as a shocked, wet, naked young man suddenly outgrowing a sink and falling with a hearty slap onto the peeling linoleum tile of a high school bathroom floor. Nodding, he waited a couple minutes as a squeaking of a handle led to the sound of running water giving way to a trickle, then drips, and then finally the only sound was the rustling of cloth and soft grunts of exertion.

“All yours, bud.” Ryoga said, shaking some excess moisture from his hair as he stepped out of the bathroom.

“Thanks.” Shouting over the sound of the faucet as he tested the temperature, Ranma asked “Hey, do you think we should wait for the nurse to get in? To explain what happened?” His voice dropped an octave midway through the question as he splashed himself.

“Hm, probably a good idea. It’s like 30 seconds to the bell if that clock is right.”

So the two of them wound up waiting for a few minutes, enjoying the strange liminal properties of a space where An Adult usually is. Pencils were picked up and inspected for strange properties not found in their mundane brethren, the venetian blinds were somehow, inexplicably, utterly fascinating in their operation. Eventually, though, the school nurse arrived, was told about what had happened with Kuno, and wrote the two boys a tardiness pass with a disinterested sigh. Leaving the office, the duo grinned at each other and high-fived as they made their way towards the stairs.

“Aw man, this rules!” Ranma said, placing his arms behind his head. “We get to miss out on the worst class of the day, and we don’t even have to get in trouble for it!”

“...Don’t class schedules rotate?” Ryoga asked. “How can it be the worst ‘of the day’ that way?”

“Easy. It’s the earliest one. Past that it’s all just details.”

Ryoga rolled his eyes, and Ranma responded in turn by messing up his hair. “Ack!” the larger boy yelled. “Hey, come on, stop it!”

“Hm, nah.” Ranma said. “Don’t think I will.” As he ran his hand through Ryoga’s hair one last time before they entered into view of the classroom windows, he noticed that Ryoga’s bandanna was still done up in the same bow that the girls had tied it in when it was wrapped around P-chan.

They were right. It _did_ look cute like that.

_______________________

  
  


An uneventful school day followed, though those paying attention (or, more accurately, those desperately trying to distract themselves from their lessons) likely would have noticed a trio of students by the windows who seemed more flustered than usual. Ranma spent an equal amount of time stealing glances at Ryoga and at Hiroshi, while Ryoga did the same back. Half the time their eyes met and his heart leapt, while the other half he saw Ranma’s eyes focusing on the boy behind him, causing that same heart to drop like a stone. Hiroshi, for his part, mostly tried to keep his mind on taking notes (though the motion in the corner of his eye did cause him to sneak more than a few glances himself, if only to work out what was happening).

Eventually, though, school let out for the day, and as the student body streamed out of the doors of Furinkan high two groups began to converge and mix, their mutual members bringing them together like a venn diagram.

“Oh! Hello Ranma, Ryoga,” Sayuri said, bobbing her head at each boy in turn. Craning her neck slightly to see past them, she continued. “And hello to you too, Hiroshi! ...And Daisuke.” her voice flattened as she looked at the dark-haired boy with slight disdain.

“Hey, what gives?” Daisuke asked, looking offended.

“You know full well what you did.” Sayuri said, leaning forward and pointing menacingly. “I meant it when I turned you down the _first_ time, it was _not_ an invitation to keep pestering me for a date until I got my girlfriend involved!”

Hunching his shoulders slightly at the word “girlfriend”, Daisuke at least had the sense to drop the subject. Instead, he leaned towards Hiroshi and elbowed him to get his attention.

“Hey, you want to come with me to the arcade?” he asked his friend. “Turns out Hibiki there isn’t exactly the best co-op partner.”

“Oh, uh, sorry man.” Hiroshi said, distracted. “I have something I need to do again.”

“Jeez, two days in a row? You’re killing me, man!” Daisuke’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “It’s not another date with that redhead girl, is it? I heard she was hanging around during that whole thing with Kuno this morning.”

At once, three voices cried out “No!”, and half the group was left staring at Ranma, Hiroshi, and Ryoga.

Ranma recovered first. “My uh, my sis told me she’d be seein’ Hiro again on Sunday.”

“R-right!” Hiroshi said, relieved. “What Ranma said.”

This time it was Yuka’s turn to elbow her girlfriend. When she had her attention, she nodded towards Ranma and mouthed “the curse” to her. Sayuri’s eyes widened in understanding, and then widened further as she grinned at the implications. She and Yuka shared stifled giggles at their own private joke as everyone else was focused on the rapidly angering Daisuke.

“That lousy bet-ruiner is your _sister?”_ Daisuke shouted. “I _knew_ it! I _knew_ she made the match a forfeit on purpose!” He rounded on Ranma, grabbing the martial artist by the shirt despite the mismatch of musculature. _“Where’s my money, Saotome?”_

“I ain’t a- _she_ ain’t a ‘bet-ruiner’, you ass!” Ranma wrenched his friend’s hands off of him (in part to make sure he didn’t discover that a portion of his lost cash was being worn underneath Ranma’s shirt). “There was… an issue. Ryoga and I had to stop the fight. Ain’t my fault Nabiki thought of that loophole.”

Still grumbling, Daisuke nevertheless stopped making a fuss over it. Soon it was time for the groups to part, as Yuka and Sayuri waved goodbye to Akane and made their way to Yuka’s house and Hiroshi and Daisuke spun off from the group down the roads leading to their respective homes. It was fortunate that they did, because not a minute after Hiroshi disappeared from view a shout was heard from above.

“You can’t just dump your dehumidifier water out the window!” came a man’s voice. “What if you splash someone?”

“Oh please,” a woman responded. “What are the chances of that?

3 stories below and unbeknownst to either member of the couple, a drenched redhead stood next to an equally wet pile of clothing, from which came the agitated squeals of an enraged piglet. Akane stood next to her two transmogrified companions, surprised that she had managed to stay bone dry. She supposed it had to be related to the curse somehow.

“Ugh, come on.” Ranma said, scooping up Ryoga and his clothes. “Let’s find someplace we can dry off a little.” A mischievous smirk playing across his lips, he looked up at his fiancée. “I can score us some food while we wait.”

_______________________

  
  


Akane looked on in wonder. She had never seen Ranma in his element before, and today was a particularly impressive haul. The addition of P-chan as an accessory (“my poor hungry little piggy”) resulted in vendors being even more generous than usual, and he even scored some pity snacks from female yatai owners, which was a first. Pretty soon the three had enough food to feed the whole Tendo household and they headed to eat their fill somewhere in the sun to dry Ryoga’s clothes. And so they found themselves on a quiet section of the riverbank, the three of them digging into whatever they felt like (an assortment of food had been gathered in an empty yakisoba tray for Ryoga’s benefit).

“Gee Ranma,” Akane said through a mouthful of takoyaki. “That was _impressive.”_

“Heh, I’ll say.” Ranma said, buoyed by the compliment. “Bein’ a girl is the _best_ way to eat out, frankly.”

The three sat in silence broken only by the sound of Ranma excitedly eating an overloaded ice cream cone, until Ryoga’s ears perked up. “Bwee?” he grunted, looking down towards the river proper.

“Hm? What is it Ryoga?” Akane asked, her and Ranma looking down to where he was pointing his snout.

Below them, a group of girls looked to be in bad shape. They were all wearing identical leotards, and were covered in grass stains, cuts, and _especially_ bruises. One of them was holding her arm and grimacing. Ranma knew enough about how bodies are put together to know how they’re _not_ put together, as well, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth in sympathy. “That’s the Furinkan Gymnastics team!” Akane said, shocked. “What on Earth _happened_ to them?”

Her answer came soon enough, in the form of a girl with longer hair than even the Akane of a couple weeks ago had, tied in 2 tight buns at the top and in 2 strands at the side. In lieu of a leotard like her victims, she had opted for a light pink blouse and fuschia pants, with a crimson breastplate covering her chest. In her hands were chuí with knobs the size of watermelons. “Oh no,” Ranma said, horrified. “It can’t be. Not _her.”_

“Who, Ranma?” Akane demanded. “Who is that girl?”

“That’s Shampoo,” he said, trying his hardest to hide behind Akane (and thanks to his current form, he was very successful). “She’s a Chinese Amazon, I met her right after I got cursed.” With a gulp, he continued. “She wants me dead.”

Akane, who had been about to admonish Ranma for his apparent cowardice, stopped trying to drag him out in front of her. “Oh, wow.” Looking at him with a small measure of trepidation, she asked “what did you do to earn _that?_ Even I have a hard time believing you did something worthy of murder.”

“Ate a victory feast. Beat her to make it okay. Kiss of death. Joketsuzoku law. Pops ate most of it anyway.”

Akane nodded. It seemed extreme, but the story at least made sense. “Still though, we have to do _something!_ Those girls look really hurt!”

Ranma gulped, but stood up. “You’re right. ‘Sides,” he flexed his currently smaller (though still quite well-defined) bicep and grinned. “If I beat her once like this, I can do it again. Especially if I’ve got help.”

“Mm-hm!” Akane said, clenching her fists enthusiastically.

“Buh- _weee!”_

Looking down at the piglet, Akane and Ranma shared a glance.

“You, uh, might wanna sit this one out, buddy.” Ranma said, patting Ryoga on the head.

“Bwee _bweeee!!”_ his currently porcine friend squealed, face turning red and steam practically erupting from his ears.

Ryoga’s indignant cries fading into the distance, the two currently human members of the trio slid down the slope leading to the riverside, ready to fight.

“Look! It’s Akane!” shouted one of the gymnasts, pointing with her good arm. “Akane! Help us!”

Whipping around, Shampoo looked for the newcomer, her oversized chuí trailing behind her body with their weight of inertia. Her eyes narrowed as she sized up the newcomer. _Ah, the dojo girl,_ she thought. Truth be told, Shampoo wasn't impressed. There was strength there, certainly, but no control. She looked practically self-taught. _Just like these girls. Barely worth the effort. If only I could find-_

Suddenly, she saw a flash of red hair. A similarly hued silk shirt. Her eyes widened, her pulse quickened, and she grinned a smile that didn't extend past the corners of her mouth.

_Her._

“RANMA!” she shouted, launching into a mad sprint at her prey. “YOU _DIE!”_

As Shampoo made a beeline towards Ranma, swinging her heavy weapons with worrying speed, Akane had to dive into the dirt to avoid being relieved of an intact sternum. She picked herself up in time to see a chuí taking a respectable chunk out of a tree, with Ranma having executed a standing high jump to evade Shampoo’s initial assault. On his way down, he began extending his leg in order to deliver a gravity-assisted kick aimed at Shampoo’s chest. However, his foot found no contact with her breastplate as the Chinese girl backflipped out of the way with almost feline grace.

Akane would have been insulted at being snubbed for a fight if this weren’t deadly serious. Instead, she decided it was time to take advantage of one of the tenets of the Anything-Goes school of martial arts:

Always attack when your enemy’s back is turned.

Running towards the indigo-haired girl, Akane pulled back her fist, ready to deliver an all out strike to the back of Shampoo’s head. Fueled by biceps that shattered a dozen cinder blocks before breakfast, her arm shot out like a mighty piston, aimed squarely at her foe’s head.

But then, at the same time her fist began its journey forward, Shampoo began to turn her head. Had she heard her footsteps? Her ragged breathing? Just sensed her somehow? Whatever the method, with inhuman speed a chuí was raised to interrupt Akane’s blow. As pain shot through her knuckles and wrist, Akane winced and grabbed at her hand involuntarily. At the same moment, Shampoo brought her weapon around in a backhanded motion, knocking Akane to the ground.

“Akane!” Ranma yelled. “Look out!”

Prone on the ground, there was nowhere for Akane to go. She looked up in terror as Shampoo raised both of her chuí above her head and gave her a feral grin.

“Any last words, interfering girl?” she asked.

“Um… please don’t kill me?”

Shampoo’s expression softened slightly. “Hm. If you helping anyone else, that might work. Unfortunately, you help Ranma. Sorry!”

Before Shampoo could swing her weapons down, however, a different voice called out from atop the embankment.

“Stop this at once, you fiend!” a strange woman shouted.

It was strange, thought Akane, but the voice seemed… somehow _familiar._

Looking up at the source of the new distraction, Shampoo saw a figure leap into the air and silhouette itself against the afternoon sun. While looking at that, she felt something wrap around her wrists and pull itself taught.

Gymnastic ribbon. Shampoo tested their tensile strength by pulling against them. They held. _Clearly_ someone had spared no expense.

And that someone was currently holding onto the wand the ribbons were attached to, her other hand brandishing an assortment of juggling clubs that were almost certainly heavier than they looked. Dressed in a leotard almost identical to the ones the ambushed girls were wearing but for the addition of a short skirt, she glared at her captured opponent.

And the first thought that went through Ranma and Akane’s minds when they saw her was:

_Wow. She is TALL._

Through the haze of hormones, however, came a second realization that made the emotions they were both feeling about their savior sit rather less well with them.

_You know, she reminds me a LOT of-_

“My name is Kodachi Kuno, the black rose of Furinkan High!” she shouted. “And I do hope you’re prepared for a _real_ fight, my dear.” With this battle cry, she raised the back of her free hand to her mouth and reared back her head.

_“Ohohohohohohohohoho~!”_


	12. Behind Frenemy Lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the fight concludes, the disaster trio receives an invite to a place they'd really rather not be!

Ranma couldn’t help but be struck by a certain sense of  déjà vu by the scene playing out in front of him. For the second time that day, a Kuno had announced their presence and vaulted dramatically into the air to land in front of him and act as a sort of knight in shining armor. Along with their shared mannerisms, this Kodachi seemed to be almost the spitting image of her brother. There were some differences, certainly: her hair was black instead of merely dark brown, and while she shared her brother’s fluffy bangs she sported a long ponytail that hung down her left shoulder. There were additional, minor changes, like looking at a human version of a spot-the-difference picture. A freckle here, some higher cheekbones there, but when all was said and done there was a truly  _ remarkable _ family resemblance. The  _ really  _ striking similarity, however, was in their builds. 

Tatewaki Kuno was probably the tallest person Ranma knew, edging out even Soun Tendo, and despite not being much of a match for Ranma he had the muscular physique of a champion kendoist. Kodachi seemed to be built from the same kit, maybe a couple inches shorter than her brother (though from Ranma’s currently shrunken vantage point, it was hard to tell), and even if her leotard wasn’t skin-tight it would have been clear from her ability to restrain Shampoo that there was some serious muscle underneath her more lithe and feminine physique.

Said restraining was playing out as a sort of tug-of-war, with Shampoo using as much leverage as she could to avoid being dragged over. The Amazon girl dug in her heels and squatted to lower her center of gravity beyond even what her natural assets provided. Kodachi, for her part, was arching her back and heaving like she had hooked a marlin, muscles moving in a complex dance under her skin. It was clear that neither girl was going anywhere soon.

If Ranma had been more observant and less…  _ distracted,  _ he would have noticed Kodachi pull out a collapsible hoop from somewhere on her person, snapping it into its full circumference with a practised flick of the wrist. Shampoo at first seemed bemused by the strange choice in weaponry until she noticed the wicked glint in the taller girl’s eye and took a closer look at the hoop itself. Namely, how as Kodachi got ready to throw it her way it seemed to disappear into a two dimensional line.

Uh oh.

Ducking just in time as it zipped through the air above her, the strangely thin hoop continued on a collision course with a signpost warning people not to play too close to the river.

It kept going.

Horrified, Shampoo watched as physics caught up with what was going on and the sign finally fell over, cut cleanly in half. Remembering herself, she returned to her squatting position, desperate not to lose any more ground to Kodachi. Looking at the other girl, however, she was met with a strange smile. Following her gaze back over her shoulder, she saw the razor hoop impacting the ground, its considerable backspin rapidly reversing its direction, straight back to its owner, through her. Shampoo did the only thing she could.

She jumped.

It was at that moment that Shampoo knew the fight was over. “Got you!” exclaimed Kodachi triumphantly, catching her hoop in one hand while reeling in the airborne Shampoo with the other. Shampoo, for her part, could only watch as a juggling club came up to meet her face. With a hearty thwack, Kodachi sent Shampoo flying once more, moving through the air in an arc before landing on her back in the dirt. When her eyes opened, Shampoo saw Kodachi standing over her, with Ranma and Akane edging into view nervously. The gymnast was holding her juggling club to her victim’s throat, which struck Shampoo as odd before a flick of a switch revealed a number of spikes, making the otherwise-ordinary piece of athletic equipment resemble a remarkably deadly pufferfish.

“I do believe I win, dear.” Kodachi said with a smug smile. In a flash, the smile was gone, replaced by a severe look. “Now you will most kindly leave, if you know what’s good for you.”

Glowering at Kodachi, Shampoo stood up and removed the now slack ribbon from her wrists. Never breaking eye contact, she walked slowly towards the girl who had beaten her, each deliberate step in the dirt and gravel making a small crunch that was almost deafening in the tense silence. Kodachi readied her clubs in preparation for a renewed assault, Akane balled her fists again. Ranma, meanwhile, hung back, looking anxious.

When she had closed the distance fully, Shampoo, still glaring at the taller girl, gently cupped both of Kodachi’s cheeks and kissed her on the left one. Akane gasped. Ranma groaned.

“Oh, my…” said Kodachi, touching her fingertips to the spot where the Amazon’s lips touched her face and blushing.

Shampoo backed away, job done. With a quick look at Ranma to remind him that she hadn’t forgotten about her other kiss, she stared at Kodachi down with cold hatred in her eyes. The wind picked up slightly, causing both Shampoo’s long locks and Kodachi’s ponytail to billow out in the breeze as wavelets were whipped up on the river. After a moment, Shampoo nodded, and leapt away and out of the small man made valley the river sat in. There was nothing for the assembled group to do but watch her retreat.

Ranma scooped up Ryoga, who had trotted down to meet them when the fighting had stopped, and absentmindedly scratched behind his ears to stave off his own nervousness. For his part, Ryoga barely managed to pretend he wasn’t enjoying it immensely. “Guess I should break the bad news to her, huh bud?”

“Bwee?”

Ranma swallowed, not knowing the best way to bring up to someone he didn’t know that she was now marked for death. It could wait, at least for the moment, as Kodachi was currently busy seeing to the injured Furinkan gymnasts.

“Are you alright?” she asked the girls. It was odd, but it looked to Ranma that none of them were particularly happy about the attention. “That arm looks like it’s in simply  _ terrible  _ shape, please, let me take a look-”

The other two girls immediately formed a barrier between Kodachi and their third, most injured member. “Don’t you  _ dare _ touch her!” one of them yelled. The way all three were glaring at her you would think Kodachi was the one who attacked them.

Flinching, her hand paused mid-reach before she slowly lowered it and shuffled backwards. Grabbing at her forearm with the hand she previously had extended, Kodachi sighed and seemed to shrink into herself despite her tall stature. Ranma caught a glimpse of her expression, and while she looked sad, she didn’t look shocked.

“Hey, are you oka-” Ranma began, before he and Akane found themselves swarmed by the team.

“Akane! Thank  _ goodness  _ you got here when you did!” said the girl who had been doing most of the talking, who Ranma assumed was the captain. “That crazy girl just started attacking us out of nowhere today! We could have been killed!”

“Yeah, and the match with St. Hebereke’s is in a week!” said one of the other girls, who had suffered some nasty cuts to the face and shoulders. “What’re we going to do? We’ll have to forfeit!”

“Oh, no!” Akane said. “You don’t think it was sabotage, do you?”

“I wouldn’t put it past those Hebereke louts.” Kodachi said, standing apart from the group. “Far be it from me to speak ill of such a  _ fine  _ institution,” she said in a voice edged with sarcasm. “But if standards have slipped this much, perhaps I should consider reapplying!”

Ignoring her, the other girls rounded on Akane again. “Akane, you do martial arts! Do you think you could fight in the match for us?” They huddled around her on their knees, making the largest puppy-dog eyes possible.

“I-I don’t, I’m not…” Akane began, confused and overwhelmed. “I’ve never  _ done  _ rhythmic gymnastics before! Why not ask  _ her?” _ She gestured wildly at Kodachi, who gave the gymnasts a smug smile and dainty wave. 

Curiously, the Furinkan team’s eyes seemed to slide right past Kodachi and landed on Ranma. “The redhead?” the team captain asked. Considering the idea for a moment, a smile grew on her lips. “Yeah. Yeah! You girls saw her jumping, right? She’s a natural talent! What’s your name?”

Ranma, taken aback, looked at the girl Akane was actually pointing at before responding and couldn’t help but notice a curiously weary expression on her face. Eventually, however, his brain was sufficiently settled to answer the question. “Ranm- er, Ranko.” he said. “I’m Ranko Saotome.”

The girl addressing him looked puzzled for a second. “Saotome? Like Ranma Saotome? Are you two related?”

“Oh, uh, y-yeah,” Ranma said. “He’s my brother.”

Akane rolled her eyes. This fake identity was only going to cause nothing but problems down the line.

In a huddle, the girls had a whispered conversation from which snippets such as “...brother does martial arts…” and “...jumped over her  _ head _ …” could be heard. After reaching a consensus, the captain extended her hand to Ranma.

“Welcome to the team, Ranko.”

“Are there… papers I need to sign?” Ranma asked, vaguely shaking the proffered hand. “A teacher to talk to? Anythin’?”

“If you were actually joining, probably. Think of this as… contract work.” 

Ranma stared at his palm like that handshake had just sealed a deal for his soul. He was familiar with “contract work”. It’s what Genma had called every not-quite-legal gig they’d picked up during their training journey, and it was a term that Ranma associated with skipping town in the middle of the night. And that’s if his old man was perceptive enough to leave  _ before  _ people got mad.

_______________________

  
  


Pretty soon, Akane was leading the team to Dr. Tofu’s clinic, with Ranma following behind her with Ryoga in his arms. Kodachi walked next to him, remaining quiet as they walked. When they arrived at their destination, the good doctor immediately saw the injured girls into the examination room so cuts could be cleaned and arms could be popped back where they belonged. Akane followed, leaving Ranma and Kodachi (from one of their points of view) alone in the waiting room.

As they waited, Ranma tapping her foot in time with the second hand of the clock on the wall, he noticed Kodachi looking excitedly around, drinking in every detail. “You… havin’ fun?” he asked.

“O-oh!” she said with a start, blushing slightly in embarrassment. “Please excuse me, I’m simply not used to such…  _ quaint  _ environs.”

Ranma looked around the office. It had always struck him as surprisingly roomy for what it was (namely, a corner clinic with a single physician on duty), to the point where Dr. Tofu even had a personal assistant. Said assistant was currently in his uncursed form, and giving his son some considerable stink-eye for not being in his as well. Still, Ranma was fairly confident that his father wouldn’t raise a fuss in public in front of someone he doesn’t know.

“Just how rich  _ are  _ you and your brother, anyhow?” he asked, grinning.

“Oh, do you know my dear Tachi?” she asked, eyes lighting up as Ranma worked hard to stifle a laugh. Smiling, she did a very good job of pretending she didn’t notice as she continued. “Yes, nice as it may sound I’m afraid that I don’t get out nearly as often as I’d like to, living on an estate as large as my family’s.”

Ranma’s first instinct was to roll his eyes at the tribulations of the obscenely wealthy, but he managed to stop himself. Kodachi had been nothing but kind to him, and spending your whole life in a big house like that  _ did  _ sound lonely.

"Least you got your family, right?" he asked. "And servants and stuff?"

Ranma was surprised to see a sad smile on Kodachi's lips after he asked his question. "Not really, no." she said. "The Kuno family doesn't have much need for servants, I'm afraid." Her expression turned more pensive as she continued. "I suppose we  _ must  _ have had some at one point. There's servants'  _ quarters.  _ Kitchens, and such. I guess… it was a sort of vicious cycle, when it came down to it." She looked at the blank, uncomprehending face of the redhead next to her and sighed. "The Kuno clan used to be quite large, you know. I'm sure we required a veritable army of servants back in the day, but we simply… diminished, over time. And as we became fewer, we in turn needed fewer people to clean up after us or cook for us or clothe us, and then we no longer needed people to cook  _ their  _ meals and wash  _ their  _ clothes, until there was just…" she sighed, shoulders slumping. "...Just Sasuke, I suppose. Just him, my brother, and myself. I haven’t seen either of my parents in years.”

Suddenly, Kodachi seemed to snap back to the here and now, and most importantly, the  _ who:  _ a girl she had known for all of an hour and who she was now dumping a lifetime of pent-up loneliness onto. Clasping her hand to her mouth and going pink in the cheeks, she began apologizing immediately. “Oh goodness, I am so  _ terribly  _ sorry to have burdened you with all that!” she said. “I wasn’t thinking!”

“Nah, it’s cool.” Ranma said, though he was slightly alarmed at the speed at which Kodachi had started talking about that kind of stuff. He thought about the house he’d been calling home for the past few weeks; big, but full of people and activity. If he had to live there alone, would it still be home?

Or would it just be a house?

The leotard-clad girl next to him smiled again. “Well, thank you for indulging me, Ranko.” The clock struck out the seconds loudly for a while as the two sat in silence for a spell, when suddenly, Kodachi gasped. “Oh no!” she said, aghast.

“What?” Ranma said, jumping to his feet (and dropping Ryoga, who squealed in fright en route to the floor). “What is it?”

“We never introduced ourselves properly!” Kodachi said, chiding herself. “How  _ terribly  _ rude of me.” With Ranma relaxing and giving her an exasperated look, she gave a short bow and announced “I am Kodachi Kuno, the black rose of Furinkan High!” Having said her piece, she extended her hand and looked at Ranma expectantly.

“Alright, then,” he said, an amused grin on his face as he looked at the hand in front of him. “I’m Ranko Saotome, the uh… Ranko Saotome of Furin-” Stopping himself, he remembered just in time that  **_you aren’t Ranko._ **

“Of uh, of…” he trailed off, blinking rapidly and taking shallow breaths for a second. “...I’m Ranko Saotome.”

If Kodachi noticed the slip up, she didn’t show it, and instead beamed as she shook Ranma’s hand. As if on cue, Akane and the Furinkan gymnasts exited the examination room with Dr. Tofu in tow. The team were all covered in bandages, and the one with the dislocated shoulder had her arm in a sling, but it was clear that she was feeling much better. Ryoga bounded up to Akane, making excited squeals at his returning friend.

“Hey they Ry- um, P-chan!” Akane said, laughing. “You glad everyone’s alright?”

“Bwee~!” he oinked happily.

“Hey, glad to see you’re okay.” Ranma said, waving at the assembled girls, who all smiled at him and waved back (well, except for one, who tried to and winced instead). As Dr. Tofu led them out of the clinic, Akane joined the others in the lobby.

“Dr. Tofu says they’ll be okay, but they’re definitely not going to be able to do any gymnastics anytime soon.” Akane sighed. “Then again, I don’t think they would do the match anyway, given who their opponent is going to be.”

Ranma nodded. He’d already fought Shampoo and won, and even  _ he  _ wasn’t too keen on doing it again.  _ Just look where it got ME,  _ he thought.  _ Chased all the way from Qinghai to Tokyo. _

“Speakin’ of which, Kodachi-” he turned to face her. “We need to talk about that kiss Shampoo gave ya.”

As Kodachi blushed and held her hand to her cheek again, Genma’s ears perked up and he started. Face slightly pale, he asked “You mean she’s  _ here?”  _ while his eyes darted around the room.

“Yeah, pops.” Ranma replied, taking a slight perverse joy in seeing his father so spooked. “When the Joketsuzoku say ‘ends of the Earth’, they  _ mean  _ it, apparently.”

“I’m- I’ve got to, um.” Sweating slightly, the teens watched as the large martial artist nervously sidled towards the door to Dr. Tofu’s office. “I’ve got to ask the doctor about taking some time off.”

“You’ve been here two days!”

“Yes, but I’m sure Tofu’ll let me go.” Genma said. “Wouldn’t want his assistant becoming a rug.”

_______________________

  
  


Neither Ranma nor Akane wanted to do this. Where they were being led held the dubious honor of being the place the two of them collectively least wanted to visit. But Kodachi was just  _ so  _ excited to have met some people who could potentially be friends, and she was  _ so  _ insistent on not imposing more than she needed to, that neither of them could bring themselves to say no. And so it was, steeling themselves for what was to come, they looked at the imposing walls and gate in front of them.

The Kuno estate.

In lieu of a doorbell, Kodachi pulled down on a knotted rope whose end went through a pulley and disappeared somewhere into the recesses of the property. In the distance, a gong rang out and several minutes passed as Kodachi bounced on the balls of her feet and hummed pleasantly to herself. “Sasuke must have had his hands full.” she said as a sort of apology for the awkward wait. Eventually, the sound of frantic footsteps grew closer and ragged breaths could be heard as a clearly exhausted person on the other side of the gates paused for a second to catch their breath. Suddenly, a slot in the door opened up with a sharp clack, revealing a sliver of the perspiring face belonging to Sasuke, the Kuno family’s ninja retainer.

“Ah, Mistress Kodachi!” he cried. “Welcome home!” Noticing the smaller figures standing behind her, he bowed. “Miss Akane Tendo! And miss…” Looking Ranma up and down, it was evident he didn’t have any idea who the redhead in front of him was. “Miss.” Running around her and gathering her various gymnastic accoutrements as they walked to the house, he bowed once more, overloaded with trick clubs and razor hoops, and opened the door to the entrance hall.

It was at this point that Ranma and Akane’s jaws hit the floor.

What they were looking at was a room that could comfortably house the entirety of the Tendo dojo, as well as a sizable portion of the surrounding property and house itself. And adorning every square inch of available flat surface in this aircraft hangar of a room were antique hanging scrolls, edo-era silk paintings, and vases and urns sitting atop pedestals and plinths aplenty. And all of it,  _ all of it,  _ covered in enough gilt and filigree to make up a sizable chunk of the total amount of extant gold currently above ground in the world. It was, without a doubt, the most ostentatious display of wealth that either of them had ever seen.

And it was where they were  _ leaving their shoes. _

Still drinking in this sumptuous buffet for the eyes, Ranma was only vaguely aware of Kodachi lightly admonishing her family’s last servant.

_ "Really  _ now, Sasuke!" she chided playfully. "You could have at  _ least  _ dusted in here."

"I'm sorry, mistress Kodachi!" the ninja said, wringing his hands. "There was just so much to do today!" Pulling out a notepad and pair of reading glasses, he consulted his list as he continued. "The trick stairs needed greasing, the punji pit needed its stakes sharpened, the electric traps needed their batteries topped up with acid, the barracuda in the moat had to have their teeth rotated, and-" the small man shuddered at this next recollection. "...master Kuno told me to clean out the gutters."

“It’s quite alright, Sasuke, I assure you.” Kodachi said, raising her hands in a mollifying gesture. “Go ahead and get going with that, would you?”

With a parting bow, Sasuke lifted an otherwise ordinary-looking floorboard and disappeared to parts unknown, the whole group watching him go.

“Nice man.” Kodachi said. “Odd, though.” Turning to her guests, she smiled. “Shall we adjourn to the sitting room? You can tell me more about this…” she paused, rolling the words on her tongue as if unfamiliar with them. “‘Kiss of Death’ in more detail there.”

“You have a room just for sittin’?” Ranma asked, still stunned.

_ “Ohohohohohoho~!  _ Ranko, you are just  _ such  _ a card, dear!”

_______________________

  
  


After an interminable period spent fruitlessly opening every door in an impossibly long hallway ( _ “I swear, I’d give anything to live somewhere that wasn’t originally designed to confuse intruders!” _ ) they finally found themselves in a room that, while not nearly as resplendent as the overgrown genkan, still possessed a dizzying scale and a more understated extravagance. Everything in it looked perfectly ordinary at a glance, and yet closer inspection revealed that none of the pieces of furniture were assembled in a factory, but rather hand-stitched by the finest artisans in Japan, and expensive teak and pink ivory wood used in place of more pedestrian varieties.

Sitting at what was undoubtedly the most expensive kotatsu any of them would ever see, posteriors atop silk pillows that cost more than the Tendo family house, Ranma and Akane blew on the surface of steaming mugs of tea that had more or less appeared on a platter being carried by Sasuke when Kodachi had clapped her hands. Ranma looked at the drinks warily, feeling like this particular moment would not be the best time to change back to his birth form. He took a sip. It was delicious.

“So, Kodachi…” Ranma began, searching for the best way to break the news. “Where Shampoo comes from, an outsider beatin’ ya is like the ultimate insult. And so,” his hand involuntarily moved to his own cheek. “You get the kiss. I got it too, back in China.”

Kodachi, whose own hand had also made its way to where she had been kissed, looked at Ranma with surprise. “She kissed you as well? My my, this Shampoo girl certainly knows what she wants.”

“I-it ain’t like that!” Ranma said a bit too defensively, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks. “The kiss of death means whoever gave it to you is gonna chase you down to the ends of the Earth!” He slammed his hands on the kotatsu’s surface (though not  _ too  _ hard, mind. There was still some tea in those mugs). “She ain’t gonna stop ‘til we’re dead or she is!”

To his surprise, Kodachi sighed, seeming more resigned than anything. “So that’s how it is.” She got up and apparently decided to inspect a kintsugi vase some distance away. “At least she’s  _ direct  _ about it.” she muttered, just on the edge of hearing.

“S-sorry?” Ranma asked, unsure if he had heard what he thought he had.

“Hm?” Kodachi said, turning back towards them. “Oh, never mind me, dears. I was simply thinking aloud to myself. Now if you’ll excuse me for just a moment, I have some things I need to get.” Practically skipping to the door, she leaned in before leaving her guests alone. “Now don’t you two go anywhere! I’ll be right back!”

Sitting by themselves, the three friends relaxed slightly. Ryoga, for his part, stopped playing the role of Ranma’s pet pig and sat bright and attentively on the tabletop in-between him and Akane.

“So, um, Kodachi.” Ranma said, breaking the silence first.

“What about her?” Akane asked, narrowing her eyes with a suspicion of what was coming next.

“Well, she seems, um…” Ranma rubbed the back of his head and played with his pigtail as he refused to completely meet her gaze. “...nice.”

Akane and Ryoga shared what could only be described as A Look, before rolling their eyes and glaring exasperatedly at Ranma.

“What’d I say?” he asked.

“Ranma, has it ever occurred to you that you get crushes on anyone who’s nice to you for five minutes?”

“W-what? No I d- I do not have a-” with his initial objections dying in Ryoga and Akane’s withering gazes, Ranma crossed his arms with a huff. “It has been  _ more  _ than five minutes.” 

_“Honestly,_ Ranma. I can’t _believe_ you sometimes!” Akane said, still glaring. _“First_ you start dating Hiroshi while you’re _technically_ already engaged to _me,_ _then_ Ryoga gets dragged into all this, and _NOW_ you’re mentally adding a third person to the mix? You can’t do this, Ranma, you’re practically turning into-”

The door opening interrupted her tirade, as the trio turned, expecting to see their hostess return. However, the person entering the room, despite resembling Kodachi very much, was not her. It was a figure that Akane and Ranma were extremely familiar with it, but they were both having a difficult time reconciling their mental image of Tatewaki Kuno with the man in front of them.

For one thing, he was wearing shorts.

In fact, the entire picture before them ran so counter to what they knew of their least favorite person at Furinkan that Ranma briefly entertained the thought of Kuno having a twin brother before remembering that Kodachi said it was just the two of them. Gone were the hakama and uwagi that made up the kendo uniform he wore at school, with the tall upperclassman instead wearing far more comfortable looking shorts that looked like they used to be full-length jeans (though knowing the Kunos, it was more likely that they were expensive designer shorts that only  _ looked  _ like ratty pieces of junk) and a t-shirt featuring English text that Ranma couldn’t decipher. Bouncing from his hip was a fancy-looking discman, and tinny speakers could be heard pumping music in his ears through a pair of felt-padded headphones, to which he was humming along vaguely.

_ "<With your head hm hmm and your hm hm hmm>" _

_ "<Hmm hm down to me hm hm open skies.>" _

Distracted as he was, he didn’t notice the objects of his schoolyard affection until he was nearly at the kotatsu and taking his headphones off. Looking down at the three faces staring up at him with eyes wide as saucers, there were a few seconds where nobody said a word (except for the pre-recorded voice of Jeff Lynne blasting out of the headphones that now hung around Kuno’s neck). Eventually, though, Kuno got what wits he had about him and found his voice.

“Akane Tendo?!” he shouted. “R _ \- Pigtailed girl?!”  _ His eyes trailed downwards to the table’s surface and his shocked tone became one of confusion. “...A piglet?” Shaking his head, he persevered. “What _ business _ have you in my  _ domicile!?”  _

“Uh, Upperclassman K-Kuno!” Akane stuttered. “W-we were just, um, here because we met y-your, uh, sister, and-”

_ “Kodachi?”  _ he asked, suddenly face to face with Akane. “You met my dear sister? She invited you here? Where is she? Are you… has she made…” A grin began forming on his face as Akane fought her natural impulse to wind back for a punch.

“I’m  _ baaaaack~!”  _ came the sound of Kodachi entering the room once more, back-first due to her arms being laden down with trick weaponry.  _ “So  _ sorry it took so long, this house is simply a  _ nightmare  _ to navigate, but in any case I’m sure this shall-” Dropping her gymnastic gear, her face lit up as she noticed her sibling.  _ “Brother dear!”  _ she shouted with glee, bounding over.

_ “Dear sister!”  _ Kuno replied with equal vigor, opening up his arms to embrace his sister.

“Dear  _ god.”  _ Ranma muttered under his breath.

Laughing, the two entered a spinning hug where they took turns lifting the other into the air. It was a scene that made even Akane smile, despite her sour feelings towards Tatewaki.

“So, dear Tachi, I see you’ve met Akane and Ranko.” Kodachi said, gesturing at the seated duo. While Akane was busy making no attempt at stifling a snort at hearing Kuno’s nickname, the man himself momentarily looked confused.

“Ranko?” he said, looking in Ranma’s direction before his eyes gleamed. “Ah, of course! Such a lovely name for a lovely creature such as yourself! Why, it must be fate that has brought you here to my humble abode!” Kneeling before the redhead, he placed a hand on his chest while dramatically gesticulating with the other. “Why must I be so honored to bask in the brilliance of such gorgeous damsels in mine own home? Truly, I am blessed!”

Kodachi, for her part, seemed to regard her brother’s dramatic monologue of affection as something highly amusing. “Oh brother dear, you are simply a  _ riot! Ohohohohoho~!”  _ After her laughter trailed off, she nevertheless pushed her sibling towards the door. “However, I have some important things to discuss with Ranko here, so if you wouldn’t mind…?”

“Ah, of course! Far be it from me to intrude upon the privacy of such lovely maidens!” Before his head disappeared behind the door frame, he produced one of his signature red roses and gave Akane and Ranma a smouldering look from behind its petals.  _ “Au revoir, ma chérie! Au revoir, mon petit chou-fleur!” _

As the door closed and Ranma and Akane were left with varying levels of distaste on their faces, Kodachi got their attention.

“Well then, Ranko,” she said. “It would seem you need someone to train you in the art of rhythmic gymnastics. Fortunately for you,” she brandished a club that suddenly sprouted spikes. “I happen to know a most  _ wonderful  _ instructor.”

_______________________

Kuno, confident that he was now away from the prying eyes and ears of his sister and her new friends, pulled a cell phone out of a drawer in his room ( _ I should really look into getting a bag for this,  _ he thought) and dialed the only number he ever had a reason to enter.

_______________________

  
  


Nabiki Tendo heard the ringing of the phone she kept in her room and glanced at the display. She recognized the series of numbers and smirked as she picked up the receiver. “ _ Kuno-baby!”  _ she said cheerfully. “To  _ what  _ do I owe the pleasure?”

“Nabiki Tendo, I have news.” came the voice of the boy on the other end of the line. “I feel it is of some import.”

Nabiki rolled her eyes. Was this clown  _ ever  _ off? Grin widening, she lowered her eyelids and dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “Oh  _ Kuno,”  _ she breathed. “You  _ know  _ I love hearing your voice.” If Kuno wanted to jump straight to business, she’d at least have some fun of her own first.

“Nabiki, I really don’t have time for this-”

Cutting him off, she slid one of the straps on her top over her shoulder (an act of pantomime that existed only for her own amusement) and continued unabated. “Mm, I do  _ love  _ a man who takes charge like that~”

Kuno sighed, the sound coming through the phone speaker as a crackle of static. “Don’t you  _ ever  _ tire of this charade, you awful woman?”

“Not really.” she said, dropping the act and fixing her outfit. “I just think it’s fun to get you riled.”

Tatewaki Kuno pinched the bridge of his nose. Nabiki Tendo was the most arrogant, self-absorbed, and downright  _ greedy  _ woman he had ever met. “Please, you know I’m not interested.”

She was also the first other queer person he had ever met, and his best (his pride made him  _ refuse  _ to say only) friend.

“It concerns one Ranma Saotome. I believe you’re familiar with him?”

Nabiki’s playfully teasing demeanor dropped immediately. “What’s going on with him?” she asked.

“Well, it would seem he has become acquainted with my dear sister.”

“Really?” Nabiki found herself surprised, which was something you could mark on the calendar for its rarity. “I didn’t think he’d be meeting her until the gymnastics match.”

“Indeed. That is, I believe, why you had me offer him tickets.” Kuno paused for a long time, breathing heavy enough that it was being picked up by the microphone.

“Hey, Kuno-baby, you okay?” Nabiki asked.

“He, that is to say, Ranma, he…” the voice of Tatewaki Kuno paused again. “He was in his female form, and Kodachi introduced her new friend to me as ‘Ranko’.”

Nabiki gave a low whistle. “Introducing himself under his ‘girl name’, huh? That didn’t take long.”

Kuno seemed uneasy. “Nabiki, you know that I understand better than most how important this is, but…” If his phone had a cord he’d have been nervously fiddling with it. “You don’t think you’re trying to  _ force  _ things, are you?”

“Hey, the kid should get some new perspectives under his belt!” Nabiki responded.  _ “I’m  _ certainly not doing anything to push him along!” ( _ Yet,  _ she thought privately.) “He just… made a new friend!”

“Yes, but what if…” Kuno sighed again, sounding utterly defeated, with none of his usual bluster present. “What if I never get to see  _ him  _ again?”

  
Nabiki simply clicked her tongue. “Oh, honey,” she said, realizing what her friend was really so worried about. “You’ve got it  _ bad,  _ huh?”


End file.
